It is no secret that the Aug. 24 Turkish military incursion into Jarablus, which sits less than 30 kilometers (roughly 19 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border, was secondarily about the Islamic State (IS) and primarily about checking the advances of the People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria, as Cengiz Candar recounts this week.
Metin Gurcan, citing sources in Ankara, reports that IS “had been withdrawing from Jarablus for two weeks. The YPG had been preparing to move north to capture Jarablus, but Ankara pre-empted the move through [Operation] Euphrates Shield. Ankara's action is further confirmation that the true target of the operation is not IS, but to block YPG’s domination of northern Syria.”