People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province, on Oct. 26, 2014. 
 
 People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the... Read More 
 
 People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province, on Oct. 26, 2014. Close 
 
 Turkish traders of everything from Red Bull energy drinks to cement are profiting from Islamist conquests in Syria, while the militants are boosting their coffers with fees from the cross-border business. 
 
 Turkey shipped $1.3 billion in goods to Syria through September, the highest nine-month total on record, according to trade statistics published in Ankara last week. The increase came after President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus lost control of most border crossings with Turkey, leaving them to rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front, as well as Islamic State extremists. 
 
 “Whoever controls either side of any international border claims license to exact tolls and fees,” said Francis Ricciardone, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and now a director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East in Washington. “Where there is no law, criminal gangs will extort all that the market will bear.” 
 
 Turkey’s Continental Divide 
 
 The exchange of goods reflects how entrenched the Syrian conflict has become and how elusive any peace agreement remains. The fighting, which started in March 2011 and flared into a civil war, has left more than 190,000 people dead and displaced millions, according to the United Nations in August. 
 
 Photographer: Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State. Close More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish... Read More Close Open Photographer: Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State. 
 
 While Turkey imposed financial sanctions on Assad three years ago, the trade is legal and shows up in Turkish customs data. Transporters enter a no-man’s land where state control is absent and they pay whoever controls the crossing. 
 
 Energy Drinks 
 
 “Every day we have four or five trucks carrying Red Bulls to Syria,” Mustafa Yilmaz, owner of Turkish trucking company Cem-Ay Transport, said in a telephone interview on Oct. 28. 
 
 More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State. Another $320 million in goods crossed into Syria from nearby Gaziantep, according to the figures. 
 
 Buyers on the Syrian side don’t identify themselves to the transporters, Yilmaz said. Goods are then transferred onto Syrian trucks in a 3-kilometer-wide (2 miles) zone at the Cilvegozu crossing, he said. 
 
 Turkish Customs Ministry press officer Yakup Bulut said on Nov. 3 nobody was available to comment. The Economy Ministry didn’t respond to written questions this week. 
 
 Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Close While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border,... Read More Close Open Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 Displaced People 
 
 The Aleppo Chamber of Industry rejected the idea of an increase in trade. Fares Shihabi, head of the organization, said imports from Turkey plunged about 90 percent because of the war. 
 
 “There are no functioning routes,” he said by telephone from Damascus. “Let’s assume there’s regular trade, there’s no war, they’re not supporting the terrorists and everything is normal. The size of the market has shrunk because 3 to 4 million people are outside the country.” 
 
 Aleppo is less than 30 miles as the crow flies from the Cilvegozu border crossing. Shihabi’s views contrast with Ali Altinel, a partner at Syrian Trade Office, a business consultancy in Aleppo. Demand for Turkish goods is so high that trucks can wait five days at the frontier, he said. 
 
 “The Syrian state takes 40 percent in taxes, but in other areas there’s no such thing,” Altinel said by phone from the Turkish port city of Mersin on Oct. 28. “Islamic State also takes its extortion fees, everyone does. As long as people are getting paid, there’s no danger.” 
 
 Turkish Policy 
 
 While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Assad. 
 
 Turkey allowed Kurdish fighters from northern Iraq to travel to the Syrian city of Kobani to help defend it against Islamic State. Erdogan is also advocating training and arming fighters from the Free Syrian Army, which cooperates with Islamist fighters to control some of the border points with Turkey, according to Charles Lister, a specialist in Middle East insurgents at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. 
 
 “Groups are widely known to take transit fees from incoming trucks and this has come to represent a key internal revenue stream,” he said by e-mail this week. “This is unfortunately reinforcing the war economy that rebel groups have become so dependent upon.” 
 
 Deliberate Effort 
 
 The surge in exports may represent a “success story” in that the U.S. and other suppliers of humanitarian relief to Syria are “deliberately procuring as much as possible from the Turkish economy,” according to Ricciardone, the former ambassador. That’s part of a concerted effort to offset some of the costs of the war, he said. 
 
 Turkish exports to Syria were $1.3 billion in 2011, the year Syria’s civil war began, then fell to $391 million a year later, according to official data. Erdogan said Nov. 3 that Turkey has spent $4.5 billion hosting more than a million refugees in the country. 
 
 The latest records from Turkey’s statistics agency now show everything from vegetable oils to motorcycles being shipped into Syria. The largest amount was listed in a miscellaneous category titled “personal household goods, provisions.” 
 
 Some of that recent increase may also reflect Syrian industrialists switching factories to Turkey since 2011 and then exporting products back home. 
 
 No Choice 
 
 “Many Syrian businessmen moved their production lock, stock and barrel to Turkey because it is safer,” Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said by e-mail on Nov. 3. “The war is damaging so much of the infrastructure and the agricultural sector that the Syrians have no other choice but to increase their imports from Turkey.” 
 
 In choosing to continue doing business with armed groups at the border, Turkey is accepting the reality that it may not have an official government counterpart to deal with in Syria for some time, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation. 
 
 “Turkey will probably have to live with non-state actors on its southern border maybe for a decade, if not more,” Ozcan said in a phone interview on Nov. 3. “Merchants are forced to deal with several different groups, like in the Middle Ages, as their goods pass through their territory.” 
 
 To contact the reporters on this story: Fercan Yalinkilic in Istanbul at fyalinkilic@bloomberg.net; Benjamin Harvey in Istanbul at bharvey11@bloomberg.net; Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Rodney Jefferson ||||| Major campaign – coordinated with Syria rebels – aims to seize Isis-held town of Jarablus and contain expansion of Kurdish militias in area 
 
 Turkey has launched a major military intervention in Syria, sending tanks and warplanes across the border in a coordinated campaign with Syrian opposition fighters, who seized an Islamic State-held village in the area in the first hours of fighting. 
 
 
 
 The operation, called Euphrates Shield, has a dual purpose: to dislodge Isis from Jarablus, its last major redoubt on the 500-mile border, and to contain the expansion of Kurdish militias in northern Syria. 
 
 Turkish tanks crossed the Syrian border as artillery and fighter jets pounded the militants in an operation backed by the US-led coalition. The incursion also opened corridors for Syrian opposition fighters backed by Turkey, who mounted an assault in the area. 
 
 Syrian rebels clashing with Isis fighters seized Kaklijah, Turkish military sources said. There were no immediate details about casualty figures. 
 
 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said violent clashes were taking place between Turkish-backed opposition fighters and Isis in the area surrounding Jarablus. 
 
 “We are determined to clear Daesh [Isis] from the border,” said the foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, at a press conference on Wednesday. 
 
 The operation marks the first time Ankara’s ground forces have ventured into Syria, with the exception of a brief operation early last year to rescue the tomb of an ancestor of the founder of the Ottoman empire. 
 
 
 
 Turkey said it had hit 81 targets in northern Syria with F-16 warplanes and had also shelled Isis positions. 
 
 Turkey tells border town to evacuate due to skirmish with Isis Read more 
 
 “At 4am this morning, operations started in the north of Syria against terror groups which constantly threaten our country,” Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in a speech in Ankara, adding that the operation would target both Isis and Kurdish militants. 
 
 The government in Ankara said the operation was an act of self-defence, in response to Isis shelling of Turkish border towns and suicide bombings and attacks targeting Turkish nationals. The bombing of a wedding in Gaziantep over the weekend killed more than 50 people, many of them children, and Isis-linked militants have carried out attacks in Ankara and Istanbul, including one at Atatürk airport. 
 
 It also billed it as an operation that would stem the flow of foreign fighters, who make up a significant contingent of Isis, to Syria, and the flight of refugees from the war-torn country. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turkish tanks and members of the Free Syrian Army pass the Syrian border. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA 
 
 “The operation comes in response to terrorist attacks on Turkish soil and artillery fire by Daesh militants in Syria on targets inside Turkey,” the state-run Anadolu news agency said. “The operation is in line with the country’s rights to self-defence borne out of international treaties and a mandate given to the armed forces by the Turkish parliament.” 
 
 The interior minister, Efkan Ala, said the response was Turkey’s “most legitimate right” and that his country could not be a “mere spectator” amid the intensifying threat by Isis. 
 
 The airstrikes were the first by Turkey, a Nato member, in Syria since November, when its fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane that had strayed into Turkish airspace, leading to a collapse of relations with Moscow that lasted until a rapprochement in July. Last week, the Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, said his country would take a more “active” role in the war in Syria, which has driven more than 2 million refugees into Turkey. 
 
 The US vice-president, Joe Biden, was due to arrive in Ankara on Wednesday morning, hours after the launch of the operation. Relations between the two allies have been strained since an attempted coup last month that aimed to overthrow Erdoğan, who accuses a US-based cleric, Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding the plot and is seek ing his extradition. 
 
 Relations have also deteriorated over American backing of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has expanded its sphere of influence in northern Syria as it conquered vast tracks of land from Isis with the backing of American air power. Ankara considers the YPG as the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), which is fighting an insurgency against the government and is a designated terrorist group, and considers Kurdish expansionism on its border a threat to national security. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Turkish armoured vehicle patrols near the Turkish-Syria border. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA 
 
 If rebel forces backed by Turkey take control of Jarablus, they would limit the westward expansion of the Kurdish autonomous zone, which Ankara also says poses a threat to Syria’s territorial integrity. 
 
 Turkey’s latest campaign is a development that underscores both the complexity and the stakes involved in Syria’s war, which has drawn in the region’s powers, laid much of the country to waste and forced a reshifting of longstanding alliances. While defeating Isis has long been the paramount American obsession in Syria, Turkey sees the departure of its president, Bashar al-Assad, as a necessary condition for peace talks, and rejects the idea of a Kurdish statelet on its borders. 
 
 
 
 • This article was amended on 25 August 2016. An earlier version of the caption on the third picture referred to “Turkish tanks”. ||||| Landmark deal is diplomatic victory for Ankara, which has long demanded a safe haven in northern Syria as precondition to join fight against Isis 
 
 Turkey and the US have agreed on the outlines of a plan to drive Islamic State out of a strip of land along the Turkish-Syrian border, according to reports, in a landmark deal that will draw Turkey further into Syria’s civil war and looks likely to increase the intensity of the US air war against Isis. 
 
 The agreement to create an “Islamic State-free zone”, as officials are calling it, comes days after a wave of violence linked to the Syrian conflict prompted Turkey, a Nato member, to launch air strikes for the first time against Isis and allow a coalition led by the US to use its airbases to bomb militant targets in Syria. 
 
 It is a diplomatic victory for Turkey, which has long demanded the creation of a safe haven in northern Syria, across the 500-mile (800km) border that links the two countries, as a precondition for joining the battle against Isis. 
 
 Syrian safe zone: US relents to Turkish demands after border crisis grows Read more 
 
 American officials told the New York Times they had agreed to work with Turkey and Syrian rebel fighters to clear a 60-mile strip of land near the border that would constitute a safe haven for Syrian refugees. Turkey hosts about 1.8 million displaced people who fled the civil war. 
 
 But it remains unclear how the safe haven will be policed, whether it will have to include a de facto no-fly zone patrolled by coalition planes, and what the response will be if troops loyal to the regime of the embattled Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, attack American allies including the Kurdish militias (YPG) and Syrian opposition fighters battling Isis in northern Syria. 
 
 
 
 It is also not clear how the safe haven will affect the Kurds. US warplanes have spent months over Syrian skies bombing Isis to help the Kurds take the fight to the militants. But Ankara is worried that the successes of the Kurds across the border will fire up separatists at home, with whom it has fought a 30-year civil war, and has launched a crackdown on the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), which has links to the YPG’s political arm, the Democratic Union party (PYD). 
 
 
 
 On Monday, the YPG accused Turkey of targeting its fighters inside Syria as they laid siege to Isis-held positions close to another key border crossing, the town of Jarabulus. In a statement, the YPG said Turkey had shelled a Kurd and opposition-held town near the border with seven tank rounds, and that an hour later it had attacked vehicles belonging to the Kurdish militia. 
 
 YPG Defense Units (@DefenseUnits) G.C. July 26 Statement: "We urge #Turkey leadership to halt this aggression and to follow international guidelines." pic.twitter.com/Wg17tdtxIj 
 
 A Turkish official told Agence France-Presse that the military did not intend to target the Syrian Kurds. Referring to Kurdish separatists in the PKK, he said: “The ongoing military operation seeks to neutralise imminent threats to Turkey’s national security and continues to target Isis in Syria and the PKK in Iraq.” 
 
 Turkey has also arrested hundreds of alleged Isis and PKK members in the past few days, in retaliation for a suicide bombing earlier this month in the southern town of Suruç, a cross-border attack by Isis militants that killed a Turkish soldier, and violence against local police by PKK militants. 
 
 The crackdown sparked violent demonstrations in Istanbul in which a policeman was killed. Attacks on police and army posts were reported in some cities in the predominantly Kurdish south-east. Kurdish politicians have accused the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of “setting the country on fire” as a prelude to calling a snap election, in a bid to reverse his party’s losses in last month’s polls. 
 
 Turkey’s peace with Kurds splinters as car bomb kills soldiers Read more 
 
 Turkey’s acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has said military operations against the PKK and Isis would continue as long as the country faced a threat from either group. Speaking during a working dinner with several Turkish newspaper editors on Saturday, he said the military operations had “changed the regional game” and “showed its [Turkey’s] strength”. 
 
 The PKK announced on Sunday that three of its members were killed, while seven others were wounded, in the second wave of air strikes and artillery attacks on the Qandil mountain, where the Kurdish group’s military headquarters is based. 
 
 The campaign against the PKK throws into question the future of the already very fragile peace process, started in 2012 in an effort to end the bloody conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish rebels, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 40,000 people. It also poses questions about the aims of Turkey’s escalation, with more force directed at the PKK than against Isis.
– Red Bull gives you wings, and if you're an Islamic militant, apparently, extra stamina to keep fighting. Turkish traders are shipping the energy drink and other items into Syria across borders that are controlled by rebels belonging to ISIS, the Free Syrian Army, and the Islamic Front, and business is apparently booming: According to trade stats out of Ankara, Turkey sent $1.3 billion in goods to Syria through September, its highest total for a nine-month period ever recorded, Bloomberg reports. Those who wield power over the border—and right now that's militants in at least three border towns—are the ones who reap the profits, pocketing tolls and fees from transporters. While Turkish customs and economy officials either wouldn't comment or didn't respond to Bloomberg, the owner of a Turkish trucking company said that "every day we have four or five trucks carrying Red Bulls to Syria." He adds that those picking up the goods on the Syrian side don't ID themselves, and the imports are then loaded onto Syrian trucks and driven away. Meanwhile, caffeinated militants may also be fortified by the "good wives of jihadi": The Independent recently documented a new ISIS media arm that posts and tweets out nursing, morale, and cooking advice for militants' wives, including recipes to "replenish the mujahidin." (Here's how you can get your portion of a $13 million Red Bull payout.)