When Turkish leaders talk about “combating terror,” however, they have in mind various Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-affiliated Kurdish groups more than ISIS. Their discourse unfailingly throws out a large net of “terror groups,” in the plural, in order to equate the Kurds (as well the Gulen movement more recently) with ISIS.
For a state that has been at war with the PKK for most of the past 34 years, that seems understandable. States have their interests and they try to pursue them, even while their allies may hold different priorities.
As far as Turkey’s allies go, the rest of NATO appeared very understanding of Turkish interests over the last 34 years. NATO allies also dutifully added the PKK to their terrorism lists and keep it there no matter what the organization says or does (or stops doing).
While Turkey treats the likes of Palestinian Hamas as legitimate actors that should have offices in Istanbul and supports a myriad of Jihadi groups in Syria, it expects everyone else to toe its line regarding whom it views as terrorists and who are “freedom fighters.”
According to many, Europe and the United States in the past have been too understanding of Turkish interests – unquestioningly provisioning the Turkish armed forces with whatever they wanted, no matter how many Kurdish villages were forcibly emptied (most estimates hover around 3,000 during the 1990s), how many civilian activists were “disappeared” through a collusion of state security forces and criminal elements (again, in the thousands), and how many rights were denied to the Kurds in Turkey.
The so-called “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine that the United Nations adopted over ten years ago – which calls for recognizing and acting to safeguard people’s basic rights rather than only the raison d’etat of sovereign states – thus seems remarkably mute when it comes to more powerful, important countries.
Unsurprisingly, Turkey’s August 24th invasion of Syria therefore received nothing but sympathy from Western governments, tinged by a bit of unease regarding how far Ankara might go with its incursion.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, even while receiving the coolest welcome ever in Ankara, rattled on about how the US supports a “united Syria” with “no separate entity on the Turkish border” and that "We have made it absolutely clear to the elements that were part of the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], the YPG [the main Syrian Kurdish militia with links to the PKK] that participated, that they must move back across the river. They cannot, will not, and under no circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment, period."
If the Syrian Kurds cannot even get a public American commitment supporting their autonomy within Syria, if they cannot get more than tenuous behind-closed-doors promises that America will “do what it can” to protect them from Turkey’s mostly American-supplied military forces, then why should they continue to fight ISIS outside of Kurdish areas, much less march on Raqqa, in such circumstances?
The Democratic Union Party (PYD), its YPG militia and their SDF multi-ethnic militia understandably fear that Washington once again plans on using and then discarding the Kurds once the Americans’ interest in defeating ISIS is satisfied.
While Turkey has legitimate interests in maximizing its security, the Syrian Kurds and the many non-Kurdish Syrian communities aligned with them in the north of the country also have their interests. Their main interest – or rather, their basic need -- is survival, and they have yet to fire a single shot across Turkey’s border in its pursuit. Linking up the cantons of Jazira and Kobane with Afrin in the west would allow them to support each other wherever jihadis, Assad or others attacked.
A contiguous territory would also make it easier to secede from Syria, of course, but they continue to deny any interest in such and only claim autonomy – which should be understandable enough given the nature of today’s and yesterday’s Syria.
While the PYD/YPG/SDF are not angels unwilling to fight to protect themselves, the three cantons continue to provide a safer refuge for all of Syria’s ethnic and religious groups for as long as outside powers like Turkey do not crush them.
Turkey’s incursion into Syria thus presents a test for America and the international community on the norms they claim to lead: Will Turkish state interests, or America’s interest in defeating ISIS, be permitted to completely trump the basic needs (security and a modest measure of liberty, mainly) of Syria’s Kurds and the Arabs, Turkmen, Christians and Yezidis aligned around them?
We all know that traditionally, only the voices of the rich and powerful get heard in such circumstances. Perhaps just this time Washington could at least pronounce itself in favor of, and willing to help protect (as long as they do not attack American allies), autonomous regions within Syria – especially until the nature of the regime in Damascus changes.
Ankara will not like having its interests circumscribed this way, but that’s the kind of guarantee that would really safeguard lives in Syria and make Raqqa worth liberating.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
