In Turkey, killing ‘terrorists’ in Syria sold as worth the cost

Turkish television audiences – far from the widespread U.S. and European criticism of Turkey’s week-long incursion into northern Syria – watched helmet-cam video of their front-line troops raiding a prison emptied of its Islamic State militants.

The “terrorists” of a Kurdish-led militia, which ran the prison and was armed and trained for years by the United States to fight against ISIS, had “set free the [ISIS] militants in an attempt to fuel chaos,” the viewers were told.

“The folly of trusting a terrorist group for keeping watch over another is exposed for all,” said a senior Turkish official.

Imparted was one clear message: Turkey’s “Operation Peace Spring” – to create a 20-mile-deep “safe zone” across northern Syria and kill all militants there – is a necessary and precise