More Turkish troops deployed in north of Syria

Turkey is reinforcing the armored columns it started deploying last month in the northern Syrian countryside of Idlib in what analysts describe as a phased incursion.

The campaign to control Idlib, which has been coordinated with Russia.

An additional column of Turkish soldiers, along with tanks and armored personnel carriers, crossed the Turkey-Syria border near Iskenderun on Thursday.

It is the third major Turkish reinforcement since October 22 as Turkey apparently intends to link territory it is carving out in Idlib with the buffer zone it established in the countryside northeast of Aleppo last year.

The Turkish drill operation in Idlib, west of Aleppo, appears to have a three-fold aim, analysts say: to contain Syrian Kurdish terrorists, considered a security threat by Ankara, from breaking out of their enclave of Afrin, adjacent to Turkey, thus preventing them from expanding deeper into the countryside near Idlib and Aleppo; to transform Idlib into a de-escalation zone, the fourth across Syria agreed to by Russia, Turkey and Iran at talks on September 15 in the Kazakh capital of Astana; and to reduce the strength of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.