After six days of attacks targeting the Ashrafieh (Eşrefiyê) and Sheikh Maqsoud (Şêxmeqsûd) neighborhoods of Aleppo, the clashes have begun to spread toward northeastern Syria. Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, attacks on the ground continue. Journalist Erdoğan Altan spoke to ANF, assessing the background and nature of the assaults developing against Rojava and the broader picture emerging across the region.
Civilian and military distinctions deliberately erased
Journalist Erdoğan Altan said the attacks launched on Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods of Aleppo since 6 January were preceded months earlier by a siege modelled on the blockade imposed on Gaza in Palestine. Altan said: “Through the agreement reached on 1 April 2025, this process was further consolidated. First, weapons and ammunition were restricted in line with the number of internal security forces. All reinforcement units and logistical support were blocked. To prevent the people of these neighborhoods from establishing contact with different peoples and faiths in the region, particularly in the city of Aleppo, a comprehensive political, social, and economic embargo was effectively imposed.
In this sense, the attacks carried out against all three neighborhoods have clearly revealed a transformation in the nature of the war being waged against the Kurds. Although the assaults appeared to aim at demographic change or a Kurdish-Arab conflict, they went far beyond this, turning the area into a space of genocide and seeking to send the message that Kurds would not be allowed to live anywhere else.
The situation we are facing is not a conflict in the classical sense. A new war norm is in force, one in which the distinctions between front line and rear area, civilian and military, legality and illegality have been deliberately erased. Hospitals, neighborhoods, water resources, and women’s bodies have been transformed from non-military spaces into instruments of psychological warfare. The objective is not only to seize territory, but to wound collective memory, humiliate symbols, and permanently neutralize the will to resist.”
Unequal force used as a tactic to instill fear
Erdoğan Altan noted that the number of internal security personnel in Aleppo was extremely limited, while the neighborhoods were subjected to disproportionate attacks involving more than 40 tanks and heavy weapons. Altan continued: “After the so-called ‘politics of fear’ that was sought to be spread across the Middle East through the ISIS was broken in Afrin (Efrîn), Aleppo, and Kobanê in 2013, we now see attempts to revive this policy. This time, it is being carried out with the backing of international and regional powers and states. In this context, the Aleppo case clearly shows the following: areas inhabited by Kurds can now be targeted at any moment, and this threat does not come only from front lines, but also from political bargaining tables. What happened in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh serves as a rehearsal for a broader pressure and liquidation strategy aimed at all Rojava. Therefore, reading these events merely as a ‘local conflict’ would be incomplete.
One of the defining characteristics of this new war norm is the open legitimization of proxy violence. States pursue their objectives through jihadist and paramilitary structures without assuming direct responsibility; in doing so, while brutality on the ground deepens, political accountability is deliberately obscured. The barbarity directed at Kurdish women fighters in Aleppo is not an exception, but a contemporary manifestation of historical continuity. The continuity established between the century-long political memory of the Republic of Turkey toward the Kurds and the practices of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and similar jihadist structures is not a coincidence, but a shared mindset.”
Altan, describing the disproportionate attacks on civilian living spaces and practices amounting to massacres through historical examples, continued as follows: “First, as in Karbala in a historical sense, an environment of brutality is created as if to eradicate the very notion of religion from human memory; and this was, for a time, achieved. Second, international laws and ethics of war are destroyed, with hospitals first targeted by artillery and mortar fire and then riddled with bullets, producing a form of barbarity that affronts all humanity. Knowing that no power or entity would raise its voice against this, the most ruthless mercenaries carried out the most savage attacks without hesitation.
The picture that has emerged is not an accidental or momentary military development. It is part of a premeditated scenario aimed at creating a political, social, and psychological rupture among the Kurds and, through this rupture, dragging them into a deep and multilayered crisis. The goal is not merely to seize territory, but to trap a defenseless society in a spiral of hopelessness, despair, and surrender.
For this reason, what is taking place is not a security operation, but an attempt at liquidation through the deliberate breaking of will and the pushing of society into an internal crisis. The fact that this intervention is unfolding at a time when the Kurds and Kurdistan are becoming an increasingly decisive balancing force in the Middle East clearly demonstrates the strategic nature of the process. Finally, the Aleppo experience has shown that, for the Kurds, the period of ‘waiting,’ ‘hoping,’ or ‘relying on external balances’ has come to an end.”
Those who attacked Kurdish neighborhoods included 2,500 ISIS members
Erdoğan Altan said the conflict engineered around Aleppo has expanded and is now continuing in a new phase. He shared the following assessments: “Based on the information we have received regarding all diplomatic contacts held between the Turkish state, Hakan Fidan, and Tom Barrack, it is clear that, within the mindset I have outlined, the aim is to continue these attacks beyond the two neighborhoods in Aleppo, extending them along the Deir Hafir and Deir ez-Zor line.
All military deployments and preparations in the region already point in this direction. The positioning along the Deir ez-Zor line of Fehim Isa, who was previously an ISIS emir, later became a commander within the Turkish-state-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and, following the collapse of the Assad regime, was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense in the Interim Damascus Government under pressure from the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), together with ISIS and the Saraya Ansar al-Sunna mercenary groups, aims to occupy all of North and East Syria. If that proves impossible, the objective is to keep the region in a permanent state of chaos.”
Altan also said: “All these efforts are also sufficient to explain why the 10 March Agreement has not been implemented and has instead been deliberately undermined. By provoking the SDF, the intention is to blame the Democratic Autonomous Administration and the SDF in the event of a possible clash before global public opinion, and then to prepare the ground for a plan to fully occupy the region.
From an international perspective, the stance of coalition forces must be stated clearly. After the ISIS attacks on Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh came to an end, reports emerged today, 11 January, claiming that the United States had launched a special operation against ISIS. Yet even though the Diplomacy Committee of the Democratic Autonomous Administration and its institutions identified and documented that 2,500 ISIS members were among the forces attacking Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, no intervention took place. Although coalition forces have repeatedly stated that they have the authority to intervene against ISIS wherever it operates, this authority was not exercised in this case.”
Altan assessed the timing and scope of the attacks together with the talks conducted along the Israel–Damascus line, the positions of the United States and Turkey in the region, and the reconfigured balance on the Syrian battlefield. He made the following observations: “The attacks began simultaneously with the agreement signed between Israel and Damascus in Paris. Launching the assaults during this agreement was a deliberate choice. In Syria, particularly among Sunni Muslims, there is deep-rooted anger and resentment toward Israel. This political and cultural reality has been entrenched since the 1950s. For this reason, the Damascus administration is pursuing a policy of pushing the agreement with Israel off the agenda and presenting it as if it has already been concluded and put behind them. The attacks on Aleppo must be assessed within this context.
There is a strong possibility that such an attack was approved within the framework of the Paris Agreement. The Turkish state did not oppose the integration of HTS with Israel. It is quite possible that this silence amounted to consent from widespread attacks. When the United States under the leadership of Donald Trump, convened a meeting with several Muslim countries against the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was seated beside him. There was a scene in which the two of them jointly presided over the meeting. At that meeting, the rope was effectively pulled on Hamas, and Erdoğan played the role of the executioner pulling that rope. In other words, he betrayed what he himself had called the ‘National Army.’
In return, it is highly likely that certain concessions were obtained regarding North and East Syria. The United States may have persuaded Israel on this matter. It can therefore be said that the attack on Aleppo emerged because of these efforts at persuasion.”
Altan also added: “With the Aleppo assault, if the war turns into a conflict between HTS and the SDF, which is precisely what Erdoğan and his circle want, Erdoğan would be killing two birds with one stone. According to Erdoğan, the Muslim Brotherhood should be in power in Damascus. Al-Qaeda does not want this. The United States and other Western powers, on the other hand, prefer al-Jolani and HTS.
For this reason, Erdoğan is seeking to incite these two forces against one another and to prepare the ground for a major military attack on Syria, while at the same time paving the way for HTS to fall from power and for forces aligned with it to take over the government in Damascus. In this way, he imagines that he can avoid confronting Western powers, particularly the United States.
The Turkish state, acting as if it were the Damascus administration and almost as if it were the owner of Syria, claims that there is peace in the country and portrays the Democratic Autonomous Administration as the force disrupting this peace. It seeks to use this narrative as a pretext for the attacks. It tries to create the impression that it is not responsible for the massacres against the Druze and the Alawites, nor for the massacres being carried out against the Kurds today and sends this message to the world. By labeling Kurds as ‘pigs,’ it attempts to influence Muslim communities and pursues an aggressive policy rooted in hate speech.”