Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeated his announcement of a new invasion of northern Syria. This would begin as soon as preparations on the border were completed, the AKP leader said on Monday evening following a cabinet meeting in Ankara.

One can be confident that Turkey will use all its political, economic and military capabilities to achieve its goals for 2023 (100th foundation day of the republic) and realise the "vision for 2053" (600th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople), Erdoğan said, referring to his dream of a Grand Turk-Islamist empire. He also said that the "operations to redeem" the border with Iraq from "terrorist attacks" - meaning Turkey's invasion of southern Kurdistan, which has been ongoing since mid-April - would continue successfully. The "new offensives" in Syria will be launched when all "weaknesses in the security corridor" have been eliminated, he stated.

Since May, the Turkish leadership has already announced another large-scale attack along the southern border. The plan is to create a 30-kilometre-deep "security zone" in those parts of northern Syria that Turkey and its jihadist allies have not yet been able to occupy. The main target of the operations necessary for this would be areas that represented "centres of attack" for the Turkish state. First, the cities of Manbij and Tel Rifat were to be cleared of "terrorists".

Erdoğan announces show at NATO summit

Erdoğan also addressed the conflict over Sweden and Finland joining NATO on Monday. "We will go to the NATO summit in Spain and do everything necessary in accordance with the rights and interests of our country" and explain the "hypocrisy" towards terrorist organisations to the interlocutors with "documents, information and pictures", the regime leader said in the usual manner of a furious sultan. The 30 NATO states are meeting in Madrid from today, Tuesday, for a summit lasting several days. On the sidelines, there will be another attempt to overcome the Turkish blockade. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet Sweden's head of government Magdalena Andersson, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Erdoğan.

The governments in Stockholm and Helsinki had applied for membership in the military alliance in May under the impression of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Turkey opposed it, citing security concerns and alleged support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the People's Defense Units (YPG). Both countries reject the accusations.

Wars of aggression in 2016, 2018 and 2019

In the past, Turkey has repeatedly acted against the self-governing territories in the majority Kurdish north of Syria in violation of international law. In the course of three wars of aggression in 2016, 2018 and 2019, large parts of the border strip were occupied by the Turkish state and jihadist allies of the NATO member country, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. In the place of the ancestral population, Islamist militias from all over the world and their relatives have been settled under Turkish aegis. Turkey is also conducting an invasion in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.. Parts of the Turkish-Iraqi border area have already been de facto occupied under the label of "fighting terror" - meaning the PKK. The government in Hewlêr (Erbil), dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), supports Turkey in the invasion.