Meredith Tax: Turkey’s Attack on Syria’s Kurds Threatens That Country’s Most Democratic, Pluralist Force
Rather than
soothing Erdogan, the United States should induce him to stop persecuting the
Kurds in Syria and Turkey and re-open negotiations with the PKK, as well as
return Turkey to a condition approaching democracy. In the long run, the ethnic
nation-state model is long overdue for a change, and support for the federalist
approach to governance proposed by the Kurds is the clearest path forward in
countries as heterogeneous as Syria, Iraq, and even Turkey. Even if Washington
is not able to recognize that, we should...
Last week Turkey
opened a new front in the Syrian war by using its air force against the Syrian
Kurdish canton of Afrin - which had done absolutely nothing to provoke this
attack—even while the battle against ISIS continues in Deir Ezzor, where the
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish YPG-YPJ, are fighting with
US support. Turkey’s attack on the Syrian Kurds has opened up a new front in
the war, jeopardized its already fragile relationship with the United States,
and given a green light to jihadis to attack the Kurds.
Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who announced that his “Operation Olive Branch” would “destroy
all terror nests” within days, launched a ground offensive on Sunday,
January 21, that included tanks, special operations troops, and militias of the
Free Syrian Army. Though the ground offensive was stalled, Turkey is still
heavily bombing; so far at least 24
civilians have been killed and an estimated 5,000 have lost their
homes. The displaced have nowhere to run, since Turkey has built a wall along
the border and those who reach Aleppo are turned back at Syrian government
checkpoints. Meanwhile, at home Erdogan is arresting any journalist or
politician who dares criticize the offensive on social media - 91
and counting.
Afrin is the
westernmost canton of what is often called by the Kurdish name Rojava; the
other two cantons, Cizire and Kobane, were originally separated by
ISIS-controlled territory, but by spring of 2016 they were linked; that August,
Kurdish and Arab fighters in the SDF drove ISIS out of Manbij. The cantons are
under the ideological leadership of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), but are
run by a diverse, multiparty umbrella body known as TEV-DEM. In December 2016,
to highlight its commitment to pluralism rather than Kurdish identity politics,
Rojava changed its name to the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.
Until now, Afrin,
which is famous mainly for olive-oil soap, has been one of the more stable
parts of Syria; for this reason, despite a Turkish embargo, it became the
destination of hundreds of thousands of refugees, who increased its population
from 400,000 before the war to roughly 750,000now.
Afrin borders Turkey on the north and is surrounded on its other sides by
Syrian government forces and rebel forces, including Al Qaeda. Like other parts
of Rojava, Afrin is run democratically,
with an emphasis on religious and ethnic pluralism, restorative justice, the
liberation of women, ecology, and economic cooperatives.
It has been an open
question how long the military alliance between these Kurdish radicals and the
United States would last once the battle of Raqqa was won and ISIS was driven
out of most of Syria. To convince the SDF- who lost at least 650
fighters in Raqqa - to lead that battle, the United States promised
future support. These promises appeared to bear fruit on January 15, when
Washington announced that it would continue to support a military
force of 30,000 on Rojava’s borders with Iraq and Turkey, and also
along the Euphrates River, which separates Rojava from territory controlled by
the Syrian government.
Erdogan, predictably,
went ballistic. “A country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror
army on our borders,” he said. “Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even
born.” Moscow also objected; Russia is
planning permanent bases in Syria, and there’s evidence Iran is too.
Neither of them want the United States to do the same. The Kurds had
made their
own agreement with Russia last March, when they let Moscow establish a
base in Afrin in exchange for a promise to protect the canton against Turkey.
On January 18, however, Turkey sent a diplomatic
mission to Moscow and two days later, representatives of the Assad
government met
with YPG leadership at Russia’s airbase at Hmeimim, making them one of
those “offers you can’t refuse.”.. read more:
