Agence-France Presse quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Aaron Stein on Turkey’s fight against both ISIS and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK):
But even more crucial for Ankara is that the zone would neatly block any Kurdish ambitions to fully control a swathe of Syrian land along the Turkish border from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean.
“Turkey feared the creation of a Kurdish belt along its longest land border, which would have cut off its access to much of Syria,” said Aaron Stein, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.