On Wednesday, children in the Turkish town of Akçakale were happy to get a day off from school in honour of the launch of Operation Peace Spring aimed at Kurdish forces over the nearby border with Syria. They ran around the streets singing army songs and waving Turkish flags. “Get out of our way,” tabloid headlines read.

By Thursday the mood had changed drastically. Akçakale’s streets were dark with smoke from mortar and rocket fire after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched a ferocious counter-attack from Tal Abyad, just over the border.

Shells rained down on the small town, some targeting Turkish military infrastructure and government buildings, but others landing in residential neighbourhoods. At least 18 people were injured and Turkish media reported three deaths, as the repercussions of Operation Peace Spring begin to make themselves felt for Turkey’s civilian population.

When the artillery fire started on Thursday afternoon people began shuttering their shops and making plans to leave. Cars and pick up trucks filled with people clogged the roads north, impeding the progress of ambulances, fire engines and tanks.

One woman who gave her name as Sabahat stood crying as various members of her family hurriedly clambered into a truck, clutching rucksacks and plastic bags. Her neighbourhood, Adnan Menderes, had been hit half an hour ago, setting a car on fire.

“This is all the Syrians’ fault,” she screamed, wiping away tears with the corner of her headscarf. “They came here and we took them in. Now the war is coming to us.”

People run for cover after mortars fired from Syria in Akçakale, Turkey. Photograph: Ismail Coskun/AP

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long wanted to take on the US-backed SDF in north-east Syria, furious at Washington’s support for a group Turkey says is affiliated to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) which has grown powerful during the chaos of Syria’s eight-year war.

He finally got his wish after Donald Trump announced last week that the US would be withdrawing its 1,000 special forces stationed in the Kurdish-held part of Syria, effectively removing the buffer that has prevented Turkey and the SDF from clashing.

Quick Guide What is happening in north-eastern Syria? Show Who is in control in north-eastern Syria? Until Turkey launched its offensive there on 9 October, the region was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish. Since the Turkish incursion, the SDF has lost much of its territory and appears to be losing its grip on key cities. On 13 October, Kurdish leaders agreed to allow Syrian regime forces to enter some cities to protect them from being captured by Turkey and its allies. The deal effectively hands over control of huge swathes of the region to Damascus. That leaves north-eastern Syria divided between Syrian regime forces, Syrian opposition militia and their Turkish allies, and areas still held by the SDF – for now. On 17 October Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed with US vice-president Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation for five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw. The following week, on 22 October, Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin agreed on the parameters of the proposed Turkish “safe zone” in Syria. How did the SDF come to control the region? Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province. In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobane, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers. Why does Turkey oppose the Kurds? For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey. Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis. What are Turkey’s objectives on its southern border? Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region. Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border. How would a Turkish incursion impact on Isis? Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria. SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory.

On 11 October, it was reported that at least five detained Isis fighters had escaped a prison in the region. Two days later, 750 foreign women affiliated to Isis and their children managed to break out of a secure annex in the Ain Issa camp for displaced people, according to SDF officials. It is unclear which detention sites the SDF still controls and the status of the prisoners inside. Michael Safi

Trump’s decision was widely criticised as a betrayal of a US ally which lost 11,000 men and women in the fight against Isis that threatens to open a new front in the complex Syrian war.

While the US president has attempted to walk back the move, telling Turkey shortly after the start of the offensive that the attack is a “bad idea”, it is now too late to undo the damage.

On the other side of the border, the second day of the Turkish assault continued at a fierce pace. Towns and villages were targeted with airstrikes and artillery barrages that Erdoğan said killed 109 SDF fighters. The aid group Kurdish Red Crescent reported at least seven civilian casualties. The SDF said three of its fighters had died, while their forces had killed six fighters with Turkey-backed rebel groups.

In the face of dogged opposition from the SDF, Turkish ground forces pressed ahead on Thursday and seized at least one Syrian village from Kurdish fighters.

By evening, Turkish forces had managed to surround both Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, a spokesperson for the Turkish-allied Free Syrian Army said. The claim was partly denied by the SDF, who said the main road in Ras al-Ayn remained open despite heavy bombing.

“This is not as simple as westerners who love the YPG [a Kurdish unit within the SDF which Turkey says is a terror group] think,” said a police officer, who asked not to be named as he did not have permission to speak to journalists. “I’m a Kurd. I’m also a Turk. I have no love for these people at all. Look what they’re doing to us.”

Akçakale’s Syrian residents did not seem as perturbed as their Turkish neighbours. The Jaedi family, who grow cotton, aubergine and tomatoes, calmly drank tea and watched the chaos unfolding from their roadside stall.

Syrians arrive at Tall Tamr after fleeing Turkish bombardment along the border. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images

“This is nothing like Syria,” 70-year-old Abdullah from Hama said, as his sister Amira and nephew Ahmed inspected their produce. “It’s just a few rockets.”

Şanlıurfa province has one of the largest Syrian populations in Turkey: it is home to 400,000 of the country’s 3.6 million refugees. Akçakale and the surrounding villages have more than doubled from 100,000 people to 225,000, local mayor Mehmet Yalçinkaya said, handing over a business card in both Turkish and Arabic and featuring both country’s flags.

One of Erdoğan’s goals in Operation Peace Spring is to repatriate up to two million Syrians into the proposed 20-mile deep safe zone the assault is supposed to create on the border. Refugees have become a convenient scapegoat as Turkey’s economic crisis cuts ever deeper. A sentiment widely echoed across Turkey now is that Syrians here have outstayed their welcome.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Abdullah said. “Even a mortar landing right next to me won’t do it.”



