Erdogan’s assent to Mr. Trump’s idea should come as no surprise. The proposal would essentially give Turkey the green light and even US assistance to invade more of northern Syria and crush Syrian Kurdish groups there, without obligating them to go beyond Kurdish-held areas to fight the Islamic State (ISIS). According to the BBC, Mr. Erdogan “… told reporters that if the US and other allies could provide logistical support, Turkey ‘would solve [the issue of] such a safe zone while protecting the security of those people there’. He also dismissed the idea that the YPG could be involved in such a project. ‘They are terrorists. Can we leave the safe zone to terrorists?’ he asked.”
President Trump may be completely ignorant of the geography he was discussing with President Erdogan. A zone 32km deep from the Turkish border would place most of the Kurdish, Christian and Yazidi inhabited areas of northern Syria under the control of Turkey and its Arab Islamist proxies. The zone would include the cities of Kobane, Qamishly and virtually all the remaining Kurdish-majority places in Syria. The predominantly Kurdish areas are almost all right along the Turkish border.
One might also wonder whom such a safe zone would protect? In the last several years, there have been no significant Kurdish cross-border attacks into Turkey from this border. Turkey, on the other hand, invaded Afrin just West of the Euphrates river around this time last year. Turkey and its Islamist proxy forces then went on to ethnically cleanse Afrin of much of its Kurdish population (with around 150,000 displaced), settling Arabs and Turkmen from elsewhere in Syria in their homes and lands. Turkish-backed militias razed Kurdish cemeteries, changed Kurdish street and place names to Arab and Turkish ones, looted homes and businesses, tore down Kurdish statues and symbols, and even began implementing their interpretation of Sharia law in Afrin.
It thus seems that when Turkey talks about safe zones in the area, it means zones where Kurds will be expelled and Syrian Arab and Turkmen rebels and their families from southern Syria will be resettled, thus relieving Turkey of the burden of caring for them in Turkey. This is the Turkish “Afrin safe zone model.” Alternately or concomitantly with Afrin, we have the “Idlib safe zone” model, where over the last few weeks al-Qaeda linked Islamists have mostly taken control. There the twelve Turkish outposts are currently surrounded by these Islamist forces.
President Trump is probably unaware of all this, or else he would not have even discussed the safe zone issue with Erdogan. If he had bothered to speak with the Syrian Kurdish groups, as well as Syrian Christians, Yezidis and secular Arabs in northeastern Syria, they might have explained it to him before he got on the phone with Erdogan. Now Trump’s advisors, generals and diplomats will have to walk Mr. Trump back from his latest statements again, finding ways to qualify them, retract them or otherwise wriggle out of what he said to the Turkish president. US policy will continue to look contradictory, rudderless and totally without vision or comprehension of the situation in Syria. American allies will continue to wonder about their relationship with the U.S., and when they might all be thrown under the bus.
Under such circumstances, the best thing Washington might do now is whatever it takes to dissuade Mr. Trump from speaking with his Turkish counterpart or any other leaders by phone anymore.
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.
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