After weeks of deadly Turkish airstrikes in northern Syria, Kurdish forces and international players are scrambling to assess how serious Ankara's ground invasion threats are..

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly warned of a new ground incursion to push Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border after the November 13 Istanbul bombing..

Turkish authorities blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Syria-based People's Protection Units (YPG) for the attack. Both sides deny any involvement.

On November 20, Ankara launched a flurry of airstrikes that killed dozens of people, including civilians, Kurdish fighters and Syrian government troops..

Human Rights Watch has warned that the strikes are exacerbating the humanitarian crisis by cutting off electricity, fuel and aid..

What does Turkey want?.

Turkey sees Kurdish forces along its border with Syria as a threat and has launched three major military incursions since 2016, taking control of large swaths of territory..

Erdogan hopes to resettle many of Turkey's 3.6 million Syrian refugees in northern Syria and has already started building housing there. The plan could address rising anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey and bolster Erdogan's support ahead of next year's elections, while diluting historic Kurdish-majority areas by resettling non-Kurdish Syrian refugees there..

Erdogan also spoke about plans to create a 30-kilometer security corridor in areas currently under Kurdish control.. A planned Turkish invasion earlier this year was halted due to US and Russian opposition..

Kurdish reaction.

Kurdish groups are putting pressure on the US and Russia, which have military posts in northern Syria, to once again prevent Turkey from carrying out its threats..

The Kurds fear that this time the West will stand aside to appease Ankara in exchange for approval of Sweden and Finland joining NATO..

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Kurdish groups that fought against the Islamic State alongside the US-led coalition and are now guarding thousands of captured IS fighters and their families warn that the Turkish escalation will jeopardize efforts to root out the extremist group.

In recent weeks, U.S. and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces officials have said they have stopped or reduced joint patrols against IS because of the airstrikes, although patrols have since resumed..

The role of the Syrian rebels.

The so-called Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition groups numbering tens of thousands of fighters, is likely to become foot soldiers for any future ground offensive..

In previous incursions, including the attack on the city of Afrin in 2018, the SNA has been accused of committing atrocities against the Kurds and displacing tens of thousands of people from their homes..

The position of the Syrian government.

The Syrian government has opposed past Turkish incursions, but also sees the SDF as a separatist force and a Trojan horse for the US, which has imposed crippling sanctions on Bashar al-Assad's government..

Damascus and Ankara have recently begun to improve relations after 11 years of tension over Turkey's support of opposition fighters in the Syrian civil war.. Damascus remains relatively silent on the deaths of Syrian soldiers in recent Turkish strikes.

Will the US intervene

US forces halt joint military patrols in northern Syria to fight Islamic State extremists as Turkey's ground invasion threats hinder these joint missions with Kurdish forces.

The United States maintains a small military presence in northern Syria, where its strong support for the SDF has angered Turkey.

At first, however, the U.S. spoke little publicly about the Turkish airstrikes, speaking more forcefully only after they came dangerously close to U.S. forces and led to a temporary halt in anti-ISIS patrols.. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke out last week "

Will Russia mediate in the deal

Russia is the closest ally of the Syrian government. Her involvement in the Syrian conflict helped turn the tide in Assad's favour..

Although Turkey and Russia support opposing sides in the conflict, they are closely coordinating their actions in northern Syria.. Russia has pushed for reconciliation between Damascus and Ankara in recent months.

Moscow expressed concern about Turkey's recent military actions in northern Syria and tried to mediate an agreement. According to the Lebanese pan-Arab television channel Al-Mayadeen TV, the commander-in-chief of Russian troops in Syria, Lieutenant General Alexander Chaiko, recently proposed to SDF commander Mazloum Abdi that Syrian government forces deploy in a security zone along the border with Turkey to avoid a Turkish invasion..

Iranian interests.

Iran, a key ally of the Assad government, strongly opposed Turkish plans for a ground offensive earlier this year, but has not publicly commented on a possible new invasion..

Tehran also has a significant Kurdish minority.. After the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, detained by the morality police in mid-September, protests and repression by security forces continue in Iran.

Iran has blamed and targeted Kurdish opposition groups in exile in neighboring Iraq for the unrest, but the groups deny the accusations..

Another Turkish invasion of Syria could serve as a model for a broader response if unrest in Iranian Kurdistan continues to escalate.

Recall that Turkey, together with Hungary, is one of two of the 30 NATO members that have not yet agreed on the membership of the northern countries in NATO..

At the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bucharest, NATO diplomats refrained from public confrontation with Turkey in order not to further undermine Finland and Sweden's progress towards NATO membership.

The Turkish Foreign Minister has made it clear to his European counterparts that Turkey is not yet appeased when it comes to Finland or Sweden accepting Kurdish exiles..

Experts say the Biden administration has plenty of leverage to convince Erdogan to soften the threat of an escalating attack on Syrian Kurds.

This includes the sale of American F-16 fighter jets that Turkey wants but opposed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and other members of Congress..

And there's a risk of betrayal. This is a risk for the Kurds, a stateless people who have often been used and betrayed by the US and the West in past conflicts over the past century..

But when asked if the U.S. had any guarantees for the Kurds, who are worried that the U.S. might abandon them to force a NATO deal out of Turkey, a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said only that no change in.