Following Turkey’s latest threat to attack the Kurds, the US scrambled to restrain Ankara by offering to fast-track the creation of a ‘safe zone’ instead.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned that without the establishment of a safe zone, initially discussed between the two countries eight months ago, he would launch another military campaign in northern Syria – the first in the region situated east of the Euphrates.
The US clearly took these threats seriously and, consequently, on August 7, announced both powers would work together to make the safe zone a reality.
The statement released by the US embassy in Ankara clearly showed Washington is doing its utmost to placate Turkey.
It spoke of establishing a joint operations centre for managing the zone, said both sides would oversee “the rapid implementation of initial measures to address Turkey’s security concerns”, and concluded by stating an aim was to make the safe zone “a peace corridor”.
The term “peace corridor”, besides sounding Orwellian, is identical to the type of rhetoric used by Erdogan – who calls the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria a “terror corridor”.
It goes without saying that under the Kurdish-led administration stability on the northeastern Syria border with Turkey already makes the area a pretty good “peace corridor”.
A cursory look at the size and strength of the forces on each side of the border also demonstrates that Turkey is well capable of securing itself from any potential threats from Syrian Kurdish-led forces.
“The concentration of Turkish troops is almost an army-corps size and includes two armoured brigades, two mechanized brigades and two commandos brigades,” noted Turkish Foreign Minister Yaşar Yakış.
“On the Syrian side of the border there is nothing that can militarily match such a big concentration of troops, except the US Air Force.”
In northern Syria, “roads in border towns and cities are scarred with freshly dug tunnels, and dozens of homes have been turned into shelters. Makeshift hospitals have been built underground,” according to The Washington Post.
It is clear from these two descriptions that Turkey is the one with the preponderance of force and does not need to act offensively, nor even preemptively, to safeguard its security. The new Kurdish positions established after Turkey’s latest threats are wholly defensive.
Furthermore, Turkey’s border regions with Syrian territory east of the Euphrates are already heavily secured and militarized and have been for years now.
During the Islamic State (ISIS) siege of the Kurdish border city of Kobane in late 2014 Ankara proved more than capable of preventing Kurds in Turkey from crossing the border to help their brethren repel the threat.
It can, relatively easily, prevent anyone it doesn’t want from entering Turkey from northeast Syria without creating any buffer zone south of its border there.
“Turkey won’t feel secure unless the group that’s been strengthened with heavy weaponry from our allies is destroyed,” Erdogan recently declared, referring to the US arming of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) for use against ISIS over the years.
A look at the YPG’s actual arsenal demonstrates that the group cannot pose a threat to Turkey. The US primarily provided the YPG and the larger Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) anti-ISIS coalition of which that group is an integral part, with small arms and armored vehicles.
These would not be capable of mounting an offensive operation against Turkish forces, especially inside Turkey itself. The US has also never provided any weaponry that could seriously threaten the Turkish border, such as artillery.
Turkey, on the other hand, can easily devastate YPG positions or troop formations across northeast Syria with artillery and aircraft (including armed drones) without sending a single soldier or tank over the border. Most of Syrian Kurdistan’s major cities sit directly on the Turkish border and are, therefore, extremely vulnerable to any Turkish attack or bombardment.
On the political front, while Turkey points to the YPG’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) origins, it invariably fails to acknowledge that the YPG has never used Syrian Kurdish territory to attack Turkey or assisted the PKK inside Turkey. This was the result of a pledge the YPG’s political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), under the 2012 Erbil Agreement.
The PYD has consistently abided by its pledge despite the aggression and numerous provocations from Turkey.
The US pledge to fulfil Turkey’s demand for a safe zone is in reality the extraction of territorial concessions from the Kurds in return for Ankara not, for now, launching another destructive and destabilizing war of aggression against them.
