Turkey playing chicken
By attacking Kurdish allies of America, Turkey risks confrontation
In both Syria and Iraq, the danger is mounting
DONALD TRUMP’S first meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was always bound to be tense. After Mr Trump’s decision, announced on May 9th, to step up weapons deliveries to a Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the meeting, due on May 16th, risks becoming toxic.
America views the YPG as a tested and valuable partner in the war against the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group, no better than IS. Late last month, Mr Erdogan’s warplanes struck the militia’s bases, as well as those of its mother organisation, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in north-east Syria and Iraq’s Sinjar region. The army claimed to have killed some 70 fighters. Turkish troops and the YPG have since lobbed dozens of artillery shells across Syria’s northern border at each other’s positions.
Turkey’s action set off a chorus of protests across the region. Russia, which has backed the YPG against Islamist insurgents in Syria, called the strikes a breach of international norms. The Kurdish administration of northern Iraq, which lost five fighters in the Sinjar bombing, denounced the attack, but also asked the PKK to withdraw from the area to prevent further bloodshed. The Baghdad government accused Turkey of violating Iraq’s sovereignty.
Yet the biggest damage so far has been to Turkey’s relationship with America. Shortly after the air strikes, American troops started joint patrols with Kurdish fighters near the Turkish-Syrian border to prevent further clashes, raising the spectre of an armed standoff between two NATO allies.
Pentagon and State Department officials also accused Turkey of compromising the campaign against IS and putting American soldiers positioned around Sinjar in danger. Commanders in Iraq say they were given less than an hour’s notice of the air strikes.
While America complains that Turkey is bombing its proxies, Turkey fumes that America is arming its enemies. Over the past couple of years, a relentless cycle of PKK attacks and brutal military reprisals has left a trail of destruction, displacement, and thousands of victims across Turkey’s Kurdish south-east. Mehmet Simsek, the Turkish deputy prime minister, says his government has “tons of evidence” that weapons provided to the YPG by the Americans have been used by the PKK against Turkish troops and policemen. Unlike their counterparts in Ankara, officials in Washington continue to maintain that the two groups are separate.
America would like the YPG to play the leading role in the upcoming coalition assault on IS’s Syrian “capital”, Raqqa. But Mr Erdogan fears this would strengthen the group further, emboldening Turkey’s own Kurdish separatists in the process. He has warned that Turkey will do whatever it takes to prevent the Kurds from building a state in Syria. “We may come overnight, all of a sudden, and without warning,” he recently said, suggesting that a broader offensive might be in the works. Yet Turkey’s options are limited. A move against Kurdish strongholds east of the Euphrates river would pit its soldiers against American forces. An incursion into Syria’s north-west would place them at the mercy of Russian warplanes. So a more likely scenario, says Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, is another round of air strikes around Sinjar.
The Turkish attacks were an attempt to force America to rethink its support for the YPG. Mr Erdogan is expected to deliver a similar message when he meets Mr Trump in Washington, if the visit is not now cancelled. He will bear with him an alternative blueprint for the Raqqa offensive, one that involves Turkish soldiers and a motley crew of Islamist rebels instead of the Kurds. American officials have been sceptical of such plans, sensing that the militants Mr Erdogan has assembled and the troop numbers he would like to commit might not be equal to the task of defeating IS. After Mr Trump’s latest decision, the Turkish scheme is almost certainly dead in the water. Relations between the two NATO allies, already frayed, are on the verge of another crisis.
By attacking Kurdish allies of America, Turkey risks confrontation
In both Syria and Iraq, the danger is mounting
DONALD TRUMP’S first meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was always bound to be tense. After Mr Trump’s decision, announced on May 9th, to step up weapons deliveries to a Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the meeting, due on May 16th, risks becoming toxic.America views the YPG as a tested and valuable partner in the war against the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group, no better than IS. Late last month, Mr Erdogan’s warplanes struck the militia’s bases, as well as those of its mother organisation, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in north-east Syria and Iraq’s Sinjar region. The army claimed to have killed some 70 fighters. Turkish troops and the YPG have since lobbed dozens of artillery shells across Syria’s northern border at each other’s positions.
Turkey’s action set off a chorus of protests across the region. Russia, which has backed the YPG against Islamist insurgents in Syria, called the strikes a breach of international norms. The Kurdish administration of northern Iraq, which lost five fighters in the Sinjar bombing, denounced the attack, but also asked the PKK to withdraw from the area to prevent further bloodshed. The Baghdad government accused Turkey of violating Iraq’s sovereignty.
Yet the biggest damage so far has been to Turkey’s relationship with America. Shortly after the air strikes, American troops started joint patrols with Kurdish fighters near the Turkish-Syrian border to prevent further clashes, raising the spectre of an armed standoff between two NATO allies.
Pentagon and State Department officials also accused Turkey of compromising the campaign against IS and putting American soldiers positioned around Sinjar in danger. Commanders in Iraq say they were given less than an hour’s notice of the air strikes.
While America complains that Turkey is bombing its proxies, Turkey fumes that America is arming its enemies. Over the past couple of years, a relentless cycle of PKK attacks and brutal military reprisals has left a trail of destruction, displacement, and thousands of victims across Turkey’s Kurdish south-east. Mehmet Simsek, the Turkish deputy prime minister, says his government has “tons of evidence” that weapons provided to the YPG by the Americans have been used by the PKK against Turkish troops and policemen. Unlike their counterparts in Ankara, officials in Washington continue to maintain that the two groups are separate.
America would like the YPG to play the leading role in the upcoming coalition assault on IS’s Syrian “capital”, Raqqa. But Mr Erdogan fears this would strengthen the group further, emboldening Turkey’s own Kurdish separatists in the process. He has warned that Turkey will do whatever it takes to prevent the Kurds from building a state in Syria. “We may come overnight, all of a sudden, and without warning,” he recently said, suggesting that a broader offensive might be in the works. Yet Turkey’s options are limited. A move against Kurdish strongholds east of the Euphrates river would pit its soldiers against American forces. An incursion into Syria’s north-west would place them at the mercy of Russian warplanes. So a more likely scenario, says Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, is another round of air strikes around Sinjar.
The Turkish attacks were an attempt to force America to rethink its support for the YPG. Mr Erdogan is expected to deliver a similar message when he meets Mr Trump in Washington, if the visit is not now cancelled. He will bear with him an alternative blueprint for the Raqqa offensive, one that involves Turkish soldiers and a motley crew of Islamist rebels instead of the Kurds. American officials have been sceptical of such plans, sensing that the militants Mr Erdogan has assembled and the troop numbers he would like to commit might not be equal to the task of defeating IS. After Mr Trump’s latest decision, the Turkish scheme is almost certainly dead in the water. Relations between the two NATO allies, already frayed, are on the verge of another crisis.
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