Ahram Online quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Aaron Stein on whether Kurdish separatists or ISIS is Turkey’s actual target in recent Syrian assaults:
But why have the Turks accepted a comprehensive deal on ISIS now?
According to Aaron Stein — a Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East — it was all about a suspected ISIS suicide bombing on the Turkish border town of Suruc that led to the death of 32 people and the injury of almost 100 on 20 July.
Stein believed that a “tacit agreement” between the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey and the ISIS group to avoid clashing against each other has been “fraying for months.”
“I suspect that Turkey will support the US once strikes ramp up in and around the cities of Manbij, Jarablus, and Aleppo,” he said.