Washington’s tweets defend Syrian partners against Turkey’s threats
Turkey has again threatened to launch an operation in eastern Syria if the US doesn’t come up with a “safe zone” to please Ankara. This puts US policy-makers and the Defense Department in an awkward position again, trying to please Turkey while not creating instability among its Syrian Democratic Forces partners who helped to defeat Islamic State.
This was at least the third time this year that Ankara has claimed it would launch a military operation against areas the US and its SDF partners have sought to stabilize. In January, Turkey said it would be forced to launch an operation if the US didn’t withdraw. It then began making new threats in late July and early August, claiming it had informed Russia and the US about an upcoming operation. Washington rushed a team to Ankara to discuss a “security mechanism” that would rapidly address Turkey’s concerns. Turkey then decided in late August to test the US again, saying it had no tolerance for US stalling.
A month after its leaders threatened a crisis with Washington, and having just returned from Moscow where Turkey sought to acquire more military hardware, Ankara said it would launch its operation in a “few weeks.” It has been saying the same thing for almost a year. “Turkey has no time and patience and it wants a safe zone to be built along the eastern Euphrates line as soon as possible,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech at the National Defense University, according to an August 31 article in the Hurriyet newspaper.
The Special Operations section of the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS, appeared to respond with a tweet on Saturday. “In the four months, the Coalition and our SDF partners detained more than 225 Daesh [ISIS] fighters. The SDF and reliable partners that suffered thousands of casualties in the fight against Daesh. Now, they are maintaining stability and keeping Daesh from re-emerging in northeast Syria.” The tweet was accompanied with a photo of SDF fighters. Conveniently, the patches on the man’s arm in the photograph’s foreground had been removed because sometimes the fighters wear People’s Protection Units (YPG) badges or other flags that enrage Ankara. Ankara accuses the YPG of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The webpage and Twitter account of Inherent Resolve also put out a statement on August 31 supporting the SDF. “The Syrian Democratic Forces detained more than 225 suspected Daesh fighters in the last 4 months and removed 4,000 pounds of explosives from the battlefield in the last two months,” the coalition statement said. It would be hard to believe the timing is coincidental with the coalition’s article, “SDF still focused on defeating Daesh.”
The article notes that the SDF is continuing to pursue ISIS elements, which it said was essential for stability and reconstruction and to ensure that regional security is maintained. “Recently the SDF supported the US-Turkey security mechanism effort by removing fortifications and retrograding negotiated forces and heavy weapons away from the Turkey-Syria border,” the statement says. It included a quote from Gen. Eric Hill saying, “The SDF’s efforts are critical to the safety and stability of the region.”
This isn’t the first time the US has used messaging and social media to support the SDF during times of threats by Turkey. A similar incident happened almost a month ago. The message is clear: The US is sticking with its partners.
Larger questions loom about the “security mechanism.” Turkey wants to bluster as much as possible to see if it can get the US to do more of what it wants, such as removing more SDF units from the border. The overall goal of Turkey is to eventually control areas of eastern Syria like it did in Afrin and areas around Jarabulus across northern Syria. Then it wants to return refugees to these areas, as Ankara has said it will give Syria back to its “true owners.”
Getting the SDF to remove defensive fortifications is a way for Ankara to weaken the SDF when and if Turkey launches a ground offensive. The question for the SDF is how far it will go to assuage US desires to both work with Turkey and support the unique accomplishments in eastern Syria. At each juncture where a crisis emerges, the situation is fraught with problems because other players, such as the Syrian regime and Iran, also want to exploit tensions in eastern Syria. The Syrian regime, with Russian support, would like to engineer a US withdrawal. It would then like to leverage Turkey’s threats to get the SDF to give up eastern Syria to the regime.
Russia plays a key role here, emboldening Turkey’s threats a bit through arms sales to Ankara, while also working with the Syrian regime, playing both sides in the hope of weakening the US role. The same thing is happening in Idlib, where Russia works with Damascus and its military offensive against Syrian rebels while also working with Turkey, which supposedly protects the rebels. Of course, this can’t go on forever. Eventually something has to break: either the US, the Turkey-Russia honeymoon, or the SDF’s willingness to give up those gains for which it has sacrificed thousands of fighters. If the SDF feels it is just being used to fight ISIS and sacrifice while not receiving assurances for long-term commitments, its political echelons might continue putting out the feelers it extended to Damascus last year. The SDF understands that it faces a third act denouement eventually, with the US wanting to leave, and Turkey and the regime both seeking to rush into the vacuum.