Governorates of Syria

Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu has again vowed that Turkey will not allow for Syria's Azaz district, in the countryside north of Aleppo, to fall to the forces of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). 

"We will not let Azaz fall," said Davuto?lu on Feb. 15 en route to Kyiv for a one-day official visit, according to Reuters. 

Syria's government on Feb. 14 condemned Turkey for two days of shelling targeting mainly Kurdish forces in the northern province of Aleppo and urged the United Nations to act, state media said.

The Turkish army has shelled Kurdish targets near the city of Azaz in northwest Syria, according to media reports.

Anatolia news agency said that the Turkish military hit Syrian government forces on Saturday, adding that the attack was in response to fire inflicted on a Turkish military guard post in Turkey’s southern Hatay region.

Turkey has made good strides in securing its border with Syria, President Barack Obama's envoy to the anti-Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) coalition said on Feb. 10.      

The U.N.-brokered Syrian peace talks, which were supposed to find a diplomatic solution to the five-year-old bloody civil war, was suspended just after three days of fruitless bickering and shady meetings around the city of Geneva, Switzerland. The talks were doomed from the start, as various groups on the ground and around the world had professed irreconcilable aims.

The United States has reiterated that it does not perceive the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as a terrorist organization, while adding that it understands ally Turkey's concerns regarding the organization, a few days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an asked the U.S. to either support Ankara or the PYD.

A U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arab rebel groups, supported by U.S. coalition planes, captured a dam on Dec. 26 from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), cutting one of its main supply routes across the Euphrates, an alliance spokesman said.

Air raids by Syrian government warplanes killed 28 civilians, including 10 children, near Damascus on Dec. 24, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

An alliance of Kurdish and Arab rebels advanced Dec. 24 against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria's north in a new offensive backed by U.S.-led air strikes, its spokesman said.

Talal Sello, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, told AFP the SDF offensive was launched late Dec. 23 in the Aleppo province.  

The Governor's Office in the southeastern province of Gaziantep on Turkey's border with Syria has declared a hot zone in the province a "special security region" for 15 days, in order to help security personnel fight against terror and breach threats.