Agreement to hand over border towns comes after more than 700 Isis affiliates escape camp

Erdoğan aims to expel refugees and force Kurdish forces away from Turkey, says foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall

Kurdish appeal for help follows Trump’s surprise decision to pull US military out of Syria

After President Trump's decision to pull out U.S. troops, residents of northeastern Syria tell NPR they feel betrayed. Syrians, led by Kurdish fighters, have lost thousands in the fight against ISIS.

The fall of Afrin city to the Turkish army and Syrian rebel forces was inevitable, but the situation remains full of dangers. A central question now is whether or not the takeover of this Kurdish enclave will lead to the ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish majority there. By Patrick Cockburn.

Syria cannot countenance Kurdish presence on its territory and Turkey cannot tolerate a Kurdish enclave along its southern border, however secular, liberal and socialist it claims (not without reason) to be. By Robert Fisk. (Jan. 18, 2018)

Washington will stop providing weapons to the Syrian Kurdish militias, US Defense Secretary James Mattis has said. This follows a vow US President Donald Trump made to his Turkish counterpart to scale down support to the groups Ankara sees as terrorists.

Kurdish revolutionaries helped the U.S. expel the Islamic State from its capital city. Will we soon abandon them? By Luke Mogelson.

America's confused Middle East strategy has also had a hand in the latest round of violence between Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

Developments in Iraq and Syria often mirror each other: the Syrian army captured East Aleppo in December 2016 and the Iraqi army took Mosul seven months later. By Patrick Cockburn.

Even if the referendum was born out of political manoeuvring within Iraqi Kurdistan, it has now built up its own momentum as Kurds rally around their red, white and green flag. By Patrick Cockburn.

A former care worker from Nottinghamshire who joined the fight against Islamic State in Syria has been arrested upon his return to the UK. Aiden Aslin, 23, was being questioned under the Terrorism Act, after being arrested on suspicion of engaging “in the preparation to fight against Daesh” and possessing “articles for terrorist purposes in Iraq/Syria”, Nottinghamshire police said, using the derogatory Arabic term for Isis.

Kimberley Taylor from Blackburn is part of the all-female Kurdish force battling to rout Islamic State. Driving them on is the chance to free women enslaved by the extremists: ‘It starts with fighting Daesh, then the mentality of the male.’ by Mark Townsend.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State has boosted support for its Syrian allies, supplying armored vehicles for the first time as they prepare for a new phase in their campaign to capture Raqqa, a spokesman for the militia said on Tuesday. By Tom Perry.

A court in Brussels has made what looks like a landmark decision against the prosecution of Kurdish officials and associations on terrorism charges.

What it’s like to be 14 in a new school, a new city away from home—and the wrong ethnicity in a divided country. By Andrew W. Jones.

Turkey says its warplanes have bombed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, marking what may be the biggest single attack by Turkish forces against US-allied Kurds in that war-torn country since the Turkish military launched an incursion into Syria two months ago. The bombings happened Wednesday night against Kurdish fighters advancing against ISIS militants near Afrin, a city about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Aleppo, Kurdish militia representatives said.

Turkey is waging the largest operation in its history against Kurdish militants and the removal of civil servants linked to them is a key part of the fight, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, as more than 11,000 teachers were suspended. The crackdown comes as Ankara also pushes ahead with a purge of tens of thousands of supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Turkey of orchestrating an attempted coup in July. Gulen denies any involvement.

The war in Syria and Iraq has produced two new de facto states in the last five years and enabled a third quasi-state greatly to expand its territory and power. The two new states, though unrecognised internationally, are stronger militarily and politically than most members of the UN... By Patrick Cockburn. (Feb. 19)

Jonathan Steele reviews “Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War” by Michael M. Gunter.