US Pullout and Turkish Assault on Kurdish Region of Rojava in Northern Syria | Jake Hanrahan
Hidden Forces
Demetri Kofinas
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 105 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jake Hanrahan about the crisis unfolding in the border region between Syria and Turkey following the US withdrawal of forces from northern Syria. This withdrawal precipitated the subsequent assault by Turkish Armed Forces on the Kurdish YPG-controlled region of Rojava. Jake Hanrahan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the UK. He has reported from Syria, Iraq, southeast Turkey, and other conflict zones for HBO, Vice News, PBS Newshour, and BBC News, to name a few.
Turkish President Erdogan, after obtaining the consent of President Trump, began his invasion into the Kurdish YPG controlled region of Syria known as Rojava this past Wednesday. During Sunday's "Face the Nation," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed to Margaret Brennan that roughly 1,000 U.S. troops would be evacuated from northern Syria following Trump's troop withdrawal announcement. There are also multiple reports of ISIS families and fighters previously captured and held by Kurdish forces starting to escape after Tukey's bombardments. Also, Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen reported Sunday that the Syrian army would enter Manbij and Kobani in the next 48 hours, based on an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (the latter, according to Mohammed Shaheen, the deputy chairman of Euphrates region told North-Press).
It seems that what we are seeing transpire in the Middle East is the disintegration of artificially constructed national borders around sectarian lines. The forces being unleashed have thus far remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey's involvement creates the further potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate future date. Additionally, Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles where Greece is concerned in recent years, and it is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its troubled relationship to the EU and its membership in NATO will prove insufficient as deterrents for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ideas of Erdoğan in the Aegean.
This conversation is meant to help Hidden Forces listeners develop some context for what has transpired over the past week, the significance of Trump's decision, and the implications moving forward.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's episode of Hidden Forces is made possible by listeners like you. |
| 0:04.6 | For more information about this week's episode or for easy access to related programming, |
| 0:09.7 | visit our website at Hidden Forces. I.O. and subscribe to our free email list. |
| 0:16.3 | If you listen to the show on your Apple Podcast app, remember, you can give us a review. |
| 0:21.3 | Each review helps more people find the show and join our amazing |
| 0:25.6 | community. And with that, please enjoy this week's episode. And the What's up everybody? About a week ago we got news through the media and through Twitter of course that the United States |
| 1:00.0 | would be pulling its forces out of Syria and making way for the Turkish military to begin |
| 1:07.8 | some type of ground invasion of Rojava and the Kurdish controlled area of northern Syria. |
| 1:16.3 | This was something I knew I wanted to cover and so I reached out to a few people. |
| 1:21.3 | I booked a very well respected academic by the name of Joshua Landis who |
| 1:26.7 | specializes on Syria. He's lived for 14 years in the Middle East. He grew up for some period of time in Beirut, taught in Beirut, |
| 1:35.0 | studied at universities in Damascus, Cairo, and Istanbul to come onto the program, |
| 1:41.0 | but I also wanted to add a different perspective, maybe get the |
| 1:45.5 | perspective of a journalist who's actually covered the conflict on the ground, and so I also |
| 1:50.3 | reached out to Jake Hanrahan. Now Jake is an independent journalist. He's also a |
| 1:55.0 | a documentary filmmaker. He's reported from conflict zones all over the world including |
| 1:59.3 | Syria but also Iraq and Southeast Turkey. |
| 2:02.7 | He's done so for Vice, for HBO, Esquire, |
| 2:06.3 | Frontline PBS, BBC News, you name it. |
| 2:10.7 | And given how chaotic the situation is right now in northern Syria and how much |
| 2:15.6 | misinformation there is, the last thing that I wanted to do is to add to that |
| 2:20.9 | confusion. But I felt like bringing on someone with Jake's experience who |
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