Ibrahim Kalin is the spokesman for the Turkish presidency, where he serves as a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on foreign policy and national security. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) On January 24, a group of men in Kilis, a Turkish town at the country's Syrian border, gathered for evening prayers at the local mosque.

Minutes later, the 17th-century building was struck by missiles fired from Afrin, the northwestern tip of Syria, which claimed two lives and injured a dozen others. On Monday, a 17-year-old girl, Fatma Avlar, was killed in her sleep when a missile hit her home near the border. The assault was the latest in a long line of indiscriminate attacks against a peaceful community that hosts more Syrian refugees than its native population.

One of the victims of the most recent missile attacks was a Syrian refugee, who himself had moved to Turkey in an effort to escape the iron grip of PYD, which the Central Intelligence Agency describes as the terrorist organization PKK's Syrian wing.

According to Amnesty International, PYD/YPG , which has been Washington's main ally in Syria, has committed war crimes in Syria by razing villages and forcibly removing local communities from their native lands. Although the PYD and its military wing, YPG, claim to represent the Syrian Kurds, hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds have sought refuge in Turkey out of fear that they would face discrimination -- or worse.

Operation Olive Branch, which Turkey launched on January 20, aims to remedy this situation and create a safe environment in Northern Syria to facilitate the permanent return of Syrian refugees to their country. The primary goal of the operation is to clear Syrian territories of all terrorist groups, secure the Turkish-Syrian border and provide safety to the local population in Afrin and elsewhere. Contrary to the PKK propaganda, the Olive Branch Operation is not aimed against the Kurds of Syria but at a terrorist organization that has fought a bloody and dirty war against a key NATO ally, Turkey, for over 30 years.

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