Reminder here that the Turkish plan is to establish a buffer between the Turkish border and the YPG and use that buffer to house a million displaced Syrians from elsewhere in Syria
Reminder, also, that this means a potentially permanent demographic change. Most of the refugees come from Arab majority parts of Syria, meanwhile many of the regions in northern Syria are Kurdish majority.
Turkey achieves two goals - one vs the YPG and another vs the seemingly permanent Syrian refugee crisis. It can even promise economic development in said "buffer zone", and promise to withdraw in case of a comprehensive political settlement with Damascus.
In the absence of any political solution in Syria in the foreseeable future, and the lack of solutions on what to do with millions of refugees, the EU may complain about the Turkish intervention but ultimately can't suggest any other solutions.
I've been following the Syrian uprising and its aftermath since day 1. The conflict kept metastasizing year after year. And now we're seeing a demographic engineering experiment that involves creating lots of Kurdish refugees to create space for other Syrian refugees.
And this is the deep problem here and why the West has so little leverage. Their solutions for the refugee crisis are/were myopic, unsustainable, and amoral.
