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Turkish President Erdogan recently stated that “We will never allow the establishment of a state in Syria’s north and our south. We will continue our fight in this regard no matter what it costs.” Just a short time ago, however, Turkey stood by and allowed the establishment of an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. After the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, the same government in Ankara made many noises against Iraqi federalism and Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Kurdish control of Kirkuk was also a red line for Ankara not so long ago, and yet here we are.
It is no secret that the Syrian Kurds – led by the PYD (Democratic Union Party) which is close to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) – would like to link up the three majority Kurdish cantons of northern Syria (Jazira, Kobane and Afrin). After the near fall of an isolated Kobane to the Islamic State last year, it is no wonder why they should. With the liberation of Gire Spi (Tel Abyad) and surrounding villages from the Islamists, Jazira and Kobane became contiguous. Now the PYD’s forces have begun pushing West towards Afrin. If they capture Jarablus, the Islamic State’s last major border town with Turkey, they should be able to link up the three cantons. Ankara fears that this will give them the basis from which to pursue autonomy or a Kurdish state.
Facts on the ground have been changing so quickly in the Middle East that Ankara, along with everyone else, can hardly keep up. This probably explains why Mr. Erdogan’s government now openly considers the previously unthinkable – an invasion into Syria. Ankara is becoming desperate to stop developments it seems to have little control over.
In the not-so-secret war plan, Turkish troops would move to take Jarablus and areas West of it in a pre-emptive move to deny these to the Syrian Kurds. Of course, the stated justification for the Turkish incursion would involve nonsense about the need for a buffer zone (suddenly), a safe haven to stop refugees from entering Turkey (how many refugees are left now?), a defensive move to protect Turkey’s border (from whom?), and a means to protect and train Syrian (non-Kurdish) rebel allies in Syria. The zone of Turkish occupation would be a few kilometers deep and approximately 30 kilometers wide – similar to the terribly successful buffer zone that Israel tried to maintain in Lebanon for twenty years when civil war wracked that country.
The risks incurred by Ankara for such move boggle the imagination. Islamic State fighters seem unlikely to wave ‘hello’ to Turkish troops as they obligingly vacate Jarablus and other areas for them (if they did, then Turkey’s relationship with ISIS would raise more than a few questions amongst its NATO allies and the rest of the world). So Turkey would have just joined the war against ISIS, which has a good many sympathizers within Turkey and which would lead to many Turkish body bags being shipped northwards.
Nor would Turkish forces be welcomed by many other Syrians. The Syrian Kurds, first and foremost, would be at great risk of confrontations with Turkish forces – which would in turn lead to more than a little unrest on the part of Kurds in Turkey itself. The Assad regime would also, with a great deal of justification vis-à-vis international law, view a Turkish incursion as an illegal aggressive war. It would seek to exact as heavy a price from Ankara as possible, for which it could conceivably also enlist help from Iran and agents of Lebanese Hezballah. In the Arab world in general, talk of renewed Ottoman ambitions and subjugation of others would spread further.
For Mr. Erdogan to order an invasion of Syria now would also strike most Turks as illegitimate. The current government in Ankara is a caretaker one following last month’s elections, and a new one has yet to be formed. Caretaker Prime Ministers should generally not allow their Presidents to launch aggressive wars.
Yet as I write this, Turkey is still moving more troops and military equipment towards the border with Syria. Hopefully this will prove just another barking red line rather than the bite of a catastrophic intervention into the Syrian nightmare.
* David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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