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Left: File photo of Turkish soldiers. Photo: Turkish defense ministry; Right: A building in Tal Rifaat. Photo: SANA
“God willing, we will achieve this operation’s goal by taking control of Tal Rifaat within a short period of time,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) on March 25, 2018, days after taking the northwestern city of Afrin from Kurdish forces. Last week, he made a similar threat, saying Turkey has “no patience” with Kurdish forces in the area.
Turkey has already carried out three major military operations in Syria, two of them directly targeting Kurdish forces, and Turkish politicians frequently say they are concerned about security along the border. So how serious is this new threat?
Tal Rifaat is located in northwest Syria. The city is surrounded by farmlands, located halfway between Aleppo and the Turkish border. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) seized control of the sub-district and the nearby Menagh airbase from the Islamic State (ISIS) in early 2016 and established a Kurdish administration there, named Shahba Canton.
Today, it is a small pocket of territory with Turkish-backed militias to the west, north, and east, regime forces to the south, and rebel-held Idlib to the southwest. It houses thousands of Kurds who fled Afrin when Ankara and its Syrian proxies invaded in 2018, forcing the YPG out.
Turkey accuses Kurdish forces of using the Tal Rifaat area to attack its forces.
Erdogan said on October 11 that their forces were targeted by the YPG in Azaz, between Tal Rifaat and the border. Two Turkish policemen were killed in the missile attack, according to Turkey’s defense ministry. The YPG makes up most of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which denied any role in the attacks.
“We have no patience left regarding some areas in Syria which are the source of attacks on our country,” Erdogan told reporters. “We are determined to eliminate the threats emanating from these places either together with the forces active there or with our own means.”
Erdogan did not go into further detail, but two unnamed Turkish officials told Reuters that Ankara is making preparations for a possible new military offensive against Kurdish forces, adding that the main target is Tal Rifaat.
"It is essential that the areas, notably the Tal Rifaat region from which attacks are constantly carried out against us, are cleansed," one senior official told Reuters.
Turkey claims that the YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group struggling for increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara has labeled both terrorist organizations.
Who controls Tal Rifaat?
After the invasion of Afrin, the YPG allowed Syrian regime forces to deploy as a buffer between them and Turkish-controlled areas in a bid to prevent attacks by Ankara and its Syrian proxies. The SDF has said several times that they do not have any presence in Tal Rifaat and that it is controlled by local forces.
An informed source within the Kurdish forces, speaking to Rudaw English on Monday on condition of anonymity, explained the complexities within the small geographic area.
“The SDF does not have any official presence in the area,” the source said. “It has shared the area with the regime forces.” There is also some presence from civilian authorities affiliated with the SDF who run the camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), he added.
The southern part of the sub-district is “fully” controlled by the Syrian regime’s 4th Division “who have besieged Tal Rifaat, preventing the passage of supplies,” the security source added.
A Kurdish civilian source, who closely monitors the situation in Tal Rifaat from a nearby camp in Shahba, told Rudaw English that they have not seen YPG or SDF forces in the area, “because they have disguised themselves as regime soldiers in order to not be spotted by Turkey.”
SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi told Rudaw in late 2019 that they do not have any presence in the area and that it is under the control of a newly-established force. “The forces present there coordinate with Russians and other present forces. They continue their work,” he said.
When asked what he meant by other forces, he replied, “There are the Afrin Liberation Forces and others with different names, but they are not the Syrian Democratic Forces.”
Turkish pro-government A Haber broadcaster published rare drone footage of Tal Rifaat on Saturday, purportedly showing YPG forces making preparations for a potential Turkish military offensive by digging trenches and creating new tunnels. It claimed that civilian houses in the area have been turned into military bases.
Only the Syrian flag can be seen in the footage.
What is Turkey after?
Why is Erdogan repeating the same threat now that he made nearly four years ago?
“The threats are a media message by Turkey, but it can also be a serious message as Erdogan wants to escape his losses in Syria with a new military victory,” Rami Abdulrahman, who runs Syria’s leading war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told Rudaw English on Saturday.
Turkey-backed militia groups have been losing ground in Idlib province where the regime has stepped up attacks since this summer, supported by Russia. Experts have reported on efforts between Turkish and Russian authorities to swap control in Tal Rifaat with Idlib.
Ankara appears to be losing interest in staying in Idlib and a new territorial gain from Kurds could renew Erdogan’s hero image at home where his decision-making is closely tied to demands of nationalist Turks. His government cannot continue without support from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which endorses any military offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria. Erdogan’s approval rating has steadily fallen in recent months as economic woes grow.
SOHR’s Abdulrahman also pointed out that Turkey has failed to make territorial gains in Syria in recent years and is now facing the threat of a new force, the obscure Ansar Abu Bakir al-Sadiq Squadron that killed six Turkish soldiers in a month.
“Catastrophe”
As Ankara beats the war drums, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) purportedly used drones to drop a notice on Tal Rifaat, warning the population that the area will be “cleared” of YPG fighters and calling on them to cooperate “before it is too late.”
According to a 2020 report by local monitor Rojava Information Center (RIC), Shahba Canton, which includes Tal Rifaat, was housing 200,000 IDPs. A local source from Shahba, who did not want to be named, told Rudaw English on Monday that there are fewer than 100,000 IDPs there now.
There are five IDP camps in Tal Rifaat and Shahba. They house Arabs and Kurds, including Yazidis who fled Afrin in 2018, and are run by a civilian council affiliated with the Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria (Rojava).
If Turkey launches an offensive, “there will be a humanitarian catastrophe because there are thousands of IDPs from Afrin. They have no place to go now,” warned SOHR’s Abdulrahman.
The routes out of Tal Rifaat all go through areas under control of different forces in Syria’s civil conflict.
Erdogan’s threats have angered people who live in Tal Rifaat and gathered on Monday to demonstrate against a potential Turkish offensive. “We do not allow the Turkish occupation to desecrate our sanctity and the dignity of the land and people, or any interference in our land,” read a statement from the protesters.
They condemned the “silence” of the international community as well as the Syrian government’s inaction against violations of its territorial sovereignty.
What now?
It is not clear if Erdogan will turn his threat into action or will change his mind like he did in 2018. A new military offensive against Syrian Kurds could further devalue the Turkish lira, which has plummeted in recent months. However, this may not stop Erdogan if he is sure the offensive will gain him appreciation at home and will not anger Russia.
Although Americans have reportedly told Kurdish authorities that they will not abandon them in Syria, they may not take any action in Tal Rifaat because the area is controlled by Russians and beyond regions where the US is on the ground as part of the war against the Islamic State (ISIS). The US mission in Syria is focused on ISIS and it has not stepped into the defense of their Kurdish allies against fellow NATO member Turkey.
Russia has not taken a clear-cut position on Turkey’s threats.
Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing on October 7 that “Syria is a permanent item on the international agenda of the Russia-Turkey dialogue, including at the high and highest levels. Specifically, the case in point is northeastern Syria and Idlib Governorate.”
She added that they “intend to continue close collaboration and coordinated work with the Ankara authorities in the diplomatic and military areas in order to normalise the situation across Syria.”
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Vershinin met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on October 17. “During the meeting, the parties conducted a detailed review of the current situation in and around Syria, tasks of effectively stabilising the situation on the ground by restoring the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while continuing the fight against terrorism,” read a Russian statement.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Turkey the previous week that Russia expects them to respect the sovereignty of Syria.
Caroline Rose, senior analyst at the Washington-based think tank Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, thinks Ankara is testing the boundaries of how far it can go in Syria.
"The Turkish campaign in Tal Rifaat is to disrupt the status quo in the region and pose a test both to the Syrian regime and its Russian security guarantor, as it aims to retain force projection and a zone of influence in Syria’s northwest,” she told Rudaw English on Tuesday. “It is also a chance for Turkey to experiment with the limits of cooperation with Russia, particularly in the wake of the 2020 March Idlib ceasefire agreement and recent tensions with Russian forces in the province.”
The Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava) has tried to open talks with Damascus about the future of the country and maintaining some of the influence and control they have gained. These efforts have so far failed, but Rose said Turkey does want to make sure there is no relationship between them.
“For Ankara, it cannot afford a long-term, informal or formal relationship between the Kurdish forces and the regime, so this is a tactic they are employing to disrupt joint cooperation, despite the fact that this could lower the threshold for direct conflict and manufacture a serious migrant crisis,” she said.
Erdogan may try for a third military offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria, but he must be cautious of the complications that will follow.
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