This is John Batchelor. Conversation with Jonathan Spire about the firefight in northeast Syria. Jonathan's been reporting on that part of the world for many years. This is the YPG, the Kurdish authority in Syria, versus what I learn is called the Syrian National Army, Syrian National Army.

Jonathan describes what that consists of and who it's working for, Erdogan.

This begins the explanation of why Erdogan has launched this effort, this expedition with surrogates into Syria.

Jonathan Spire, Middle East Forum, the YPG firefight with the Syrian National Army.

More of this later tonight.

Yeah, first of all, that's absolutely correct. John, the Syrian National Army or Jaishal Watanir, in Arabic,

is pretty much a creation of the Turks.

What the Turks did was they took the remnants of the Syrian Arab insurgency in northern Syria

and put them all together, basically under Turkish command. And this is, in

essence, a Turkish proxy organization. And the Turks are currently using it to try to destroy

the Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria, because the Turks consider that autonomy to be a franchise

of the PKK organization, which of course they are engaged in a

counterinsurgency against. So I think it's high up on Erdogan's agenda right now to try to

destroy that Kurdish power or Kurdish autonomy that's been in existence now for about

11 years, 11 coming on to 12 years.