The Turks move into Syria
Brian M Downing
After years of avoiding direct engagement in the Syrian civil war, Turkey has sent armor and fighter aircraft across the border. Their mission is to drive ISIL from a limited area but also, and more importantly, to drive out Kurdish militias.
The incursion, whose length is uncertain but likely protracted, was brought on by repeated ISIL attacks inside Turkey and by concerns that Syrian Kurds are creating a homeland along the border between Turkey and the former Syria. What does Turkey expect to accomplish? And how will other powers in the war react?
Objectives
Turkish troops will soon occupy a region in northern Syria that interrupts the line of Kurdish lands stretching along the border. This signals Ankara’s displeasure with the prospect of an independent Kurdish statelet.
It also intends to intimidate the Syrian Kurds who, unlike Iraqi Kurds, are aligned with the PKK – the movement of Turkish Kurds that is fighting an insurgency to establish a statelet that would deprive Ankara of 20% of its land and population.
Washington, already mired in the Syrian war, has cautioned Turkey not to go any deeper across its border. But President Erdogan is defiant toward Washington, and in any case he may be drawn deeper.
Risks
Few actions in the world come without complications. None in the Middle East. Turkey believes it can obtain its objectives by breaking the continuity in Syrian Kurdistan, but how much and for how long? Syrian Kurds can establish a viable autonomous statelet despite the presence of Turkish troops in a small part of it. This of course will tempt Turkey to go deeper into Syria or tie itself to an Arab rebel statelet, permanently.
Although Washington has asked the Kurds to withdraw from Turkish troops, and reports indicate they are doing so, they might not be obliging in the long run. With the Turkish army weakened by Erdogan’s purges, and the public deeply divided over his creeping Islamism, the Kurds may choose to wear down Turkish resolve with a protracted war of attrition, in the enclave and elsewhere.
The Kurds may feel that as the region continues to disintegrate, the time has come to take what Great Powers have long denied them – a homeland. The PKK may make a similar judgement and increase its attacks on security forces in southeastern Turkey and possibly in major cities outside of it.
Though the Kurds handed ISIL its first defeat last year at Kobane, and have badly weakened it elsewhere in Syria and in Iraq, the Islamist army may seek to increase their bombing campaign in Turkey. ISIL may calculate, if only out of ideology and desperation, that the Turkish state can be broken down.
The Syrian War
A major battle for Aleppo has been ongoing for several weeks, pitting government troops against two Islamist forces, one of which has some support from Ankara, and Kurdish troops. The Turkish incursion will divert the attention of Kurdish forces. This will of course help Damascus.
Similarly, Kurdish troops designated to besiege Raqqa, the ISIL capital in eastern Syria, may put the US-backed campaign on hold, or even divert troops to fight the Turks. They may reevaluate the trustworthiness of American backers.
The US
The Turkish incursion makes the American effort in Syria even more convoluted. The US and Turkey are NATO partners and though there can be no invocation of the defense treaty as Turkey was not attacked, the US cannot alienate a major ally. In that elements of the Free Syrian Army, another US-backed group, serve alongside the Turkish incursion force, the US is further bound to Ankara’s side.
Iraqi Kurds, also backed by the US, are besieging Mosul, ISIL’s prize holding in Iraq. The Turkish incursion, however, will have little effect here. Iraqi Kurds are on good terms with Ankara. Their oil is exported through a Turkish port, and they hire Turkish engineering firms to build their infrastructure.
The US also backs the Syrian Kurds. It is they who with the help of relentless American airstrikes defeated ISIL at Kobane and halted its seemingly invincible offensive. And it is they who are hoped to play a major role in taking Raqqa. Washington will appear – probably all the more – as another scheming, opportunistic power, no different from the powers at Versailles after the First World War.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.