Turkey’s "rescue" of Moldavan woman from NE Syria may be justification for Turkish invasion – regional analyst
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Regional expert and former advisor for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Manaf Keilani said that Turkey’s announcement that its intelligence “saved” a Moldovan woman from Hawl camp in northeastern Syria is a political message addressing the world at large, and may end with justifications that Turkey might offer to launch a new military operation against the areas of the Autonomous Administration.
“The alleged Turkish intelligence operation has no military character at all, otherwise the official Turkish media would be proactive in publishing more details about it,” Keilani told North Press.
The official Turkish Anadolu agency said last Friday that “Turkish intelligence saved a Moldovan woman” named Natalia Barkal and her four children from Hawl camp northeastern Syria, and accused the SDF of detaining them even though they came to Syria “for trade”.
There are about 11,000 women and children of ISIS families from about 54 countries held in a separate part of the camp known as the department of “Foreigners” or “Immigrant Women” who are known to be extremists, according to the camp’s management.
Earlier on Sunday, a high-ranking security source from Hawl camp revealed to North Press that the Moldovan woman whom the Turkish intelligence smuggled out of the country, is the wife of an ISIS fighter, and added that Barkal was on their wanted list, having surrendered to the SDF during the battle of Baghouz, ISIS’ last stronghold, in March 2019. They discovered her escape after carrying out a security campaign in the camp in mid-June, without giving further details on how she escaped.
“What seems more realistic is that the woman who could hold Moldovan citizenship managed to escape from the camp and pass through to a region under the control of the Turkish army, where she was stopped waiting for a decision by the political authority to take advantage of this incident, which is not rare at all, and give it a human and moral character in a message mainly directed to the outer world,” Keilani said.
“Turkey wants to tell the people (not Western countries that implicitly agree with Turkish presence in the Syrian north) that on the one hand, any future Turkish operation can be justified for humanitarian reasons, and on the other hand the Turkish army is able to implement its will wherever and whenever it wants…and this last message is of course directed to the Kurdish fighters to break their morale.”
He added that any “real or fabricated terrorist operation” could fall on the list of justifications for a military operation that could be planned and carried out by one of the armies present in the region, led by the Turkish army.
Keilani said that ISIS was established with funding and support from international countries with the aim of establishing hotbeds of violence and extremism to prevent any stability in the region, and that ISIS has not been eliminated so far “because the joint international political decision to eliminate it and get rid of it has not been made yet.”
He pointed out that any possible Turkish military operation in the areas of the Autonomous Administration “will be in full coordination with the US administration, and with the knowledge of Russian and Syrian leadership that coordinates continuously with Turkish leadership.”
He said that its aim is “to end any presence of any form of the Kurdish Autonomous Administration on Turkey’s southern borders, and even farther from the border region if necessary.”
Reporting by Zana al-Ali, editing by Lucas Chapman