Kurdish militia fighters fired five mortars at an observation post in Idlib staffed by
In response, the
Up until the deployment of
The incident comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...prepares to host
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
and Hassan Rouhani for summit talks on Syria in Sochi on Wednesday.
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
has repeatedly threatened to launch a military operation on Afrin, which is controlled by the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) militia considered by Turkey to be a terror group.
Ankara views the YPG as the
The PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing....
Russia, along with Iran, is the key supporter of Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
while Turkey has backed the rebels seeking Assad's ouster.
But Russia and Turkey have been working together since a 2016 reconciliation deal ended a crisis caused by the shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria.
Analysts say that Erdogan will be keen to discourage Putin from backing the YPG in Syria at the Sochi talks, as Ankara seeks a say in post-war Syria after over six years of conflict.