Can Erdogan get his way in northeast Syria?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has two stated objectives for Turkey’s operation in northeast Syria. One is the complete removal of Syrian Kurdish-led fighters from the border and the other is the resettlement in this area of millions of Syrian Arab refugees currently in Turkey. While he may soon achieve the first objective it seems less likely he will achieve the second in light of recent developments.

On Tuesday, Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reached an agreement for the future status of northeast Syria during a meeting at Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi. Under the agreement, fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are to withdraw with their weapons 30 km from the border and destroy their fortifications. 

Russian military police and “Syrian border guards” are set to oversee the process according to the agreement. 

Then, Turkey and Russia will begin joint patrols in most areas near the border, with the notable exception of the de-facto Syrian Kurdish capital city Qamishli, up to 10 km south of the Turkey-Syria border. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned the Kurds on Wednesday that if they fail to withdraw “then Syrian border guards and Russian military police officers will have to pull back” and “the remaining Kurdish units will be crushed by the Turkish military machine”. 

The deal seems to be a substitute of sorts for the ‘safe zone’ arrangement the US and Turkey were working on before President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from the region on October 6, following a phone call with Erdogan. 

It is unclear how deep that ‘safe zone’ would have been had the US forces remained in place. Turkey had sought a 32 km deep zone while the US tried to convince it to compromise by accepting a substantially shallower zone. 

Before the US withdrawal, the American and Turkish militaries had already begun carrying out joint patrols in the area and also made several helicopter overflights, which enabled Ankara to verify that the SDF had withdrawn its heavy weapons and destroyed its fortifications. This was not enough to satisfy Erdogan, however. 

Russia has been a major advocate of restoring the 1998 Adana Agreement between Ankara and Damascus. Under that agreement, Turkey was authorized to pursue Kurdish fighters up to 10 km into Syrian territory, but was not permitted to maintain any military presence on Syrian soil. 

Russia’s special presidential envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, recently said it would be unacceptable for Turkey to advance any further than 5-10 km into Syria. Russia also opposes Turkey retaining a permanent military presence in Syria. 

Although Tuesday’s agreement seems to have given Turkey a lot of what it wanted, it might also prevent Erdogan from implementing his broader plans for northeast Syria. 

On September 25 the Turkish president told the UN General Assembly that Turkey intends to settle one million refugees in northeast Syria following the first phase of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring.  

In the operation’s second phase Erdogan seeks to establish a ‘safe zone’ 30 km deep and 480 km wide that can host an additional one million Syrians. 

Also, the Turkish president suggested, if Turkey manages to achieve a third phase it might even extend the zone as far as Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, more than 100 km into Syria. 

For the first two phases, Turkey estimates it will need a total of $53 billion to build 140 villages and 10 towns consisting of approximately 200,000 housing units.  

The vast majority of the Syrian refugees Turkey intends to resettle in northeast Syria are not originally from that region. Such a settlement would therefore fundamentally alter northeast Syria’s demographics and make the Kurds a minority on their own homeland. 

The SDF had said it had no issue with the resettlement of refugees in northeast Syria – provided they were originally from that region. 

When Turkey invaded the small northwest Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin in early 2018, it displaced more than 100,000 civilians, mostly Kurds. Its Syrian militia proxies then promptly resettled displaced Syrian Arabs from East Ghouta in vacated homes in Afrin as part of a clear effort to re-engineer that region’s long-established Kurdish-majority demographics. 

Before invading Afrin, Turkey seized control of a much larger Arab-majority area in northwest Syria from the Islamic State group (ISIS) in its 2016-17 Operation Euphrates Shield. 

Ankara has repeatedly boasted that this area is safe for displaced Syrians thanks to its generous investments and construction projects there. However, instead of resettling displaced Arab Syrians from East Ghouta in that zone Turkey and its Syrian militia proxies instead chose to resettle them in Afrin shortly after the invasion, even though that the small enclave had just endured a destructive war.  

Some of Turkey’s proxies, many of which are Islamists, also excused the mass looting of Kurdish businesses and homes that occurred immediately after Afrin city fell by insisting it was the legitimate spoils of war.

These same militias have also looted businesses in the areas of northeast Syria that they captured since the beginning of Operation Peace Spring. In the town of Sari Kani, one resident said local Arabs are also fearful of these militias. He observed that some of the Turkish-backed fighters looting properties “spoke Arabic with an accent from the Idlib area” – a jihadist-controlled region.

The mass resettlement of Arab Syrians who are not originally from northeast Syria could also create tensions with local Arabs, even though most of them are Sunni Muslims, as they have different accents and customs.  

The latest Russia-Turkey agreement stipulates that “joint efforts will be launched to facilitate the return of refugees in a safe and voluntary manner”. 

It did not, however, specify where exactly these refugees would be resettled. Under the agreement, the SDF will have to withdraw from the northwestern Arab-majority areas of Manbij and Tel Rifaat. The agreement also says the status quo in areas captured by Turkey in its Peace Spring operation to date, namely Gire Spi (Tal Abyad) and Sari Kani, “will be preserved”. 

Damascus opposes Erdogan’s resettlement plan. On October 1, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said: “If Erdogan wants to return Syrians, he has to coordinate with the Syrian state to ensure their safe return to the areas they left rather than carrying out ethnic cleansing in specific areas because this violates international law.” 

Taken together, these recent developments indicate Erdogan succeed in seeing Kurdish-led forces removed a long distance from the Turkish border. Although he may be allowed to resettle some Syrian refugees in Manbij and Gire Spi, and perhaps other areas of northeast Syria with their original inhabitants, it is much less likely he be allowed to fulfil his grand plan to fundamentally re-engineer northeast Syria’s demographics.