Charade on Turkish border
US imposes sanctions on Turkey
RUSSIA and its Syrian ally Bashar alAssad win, the Kurds lose, and the United States pulls out. It has been a hectic 48 hours on the TurkishSyrian border.
After a phone call with
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on October 7, Donald Trump abruptly abandoned America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. As US troops pulled out of their positions along the Syria’s northern border, where they had been protecting the Kurds from a Turkish attack, Erdogan moved fast.
The Turkish president declared that he would take over a big chunk of northern Syria to drive out the Syrian Democratic forces (SDF), the Kurdishdominated militia that has been America’s key ally in the fight against Islamic State (Isis). Erdogan described the SDF as ‘‘terrorists’’ and a threat to Turkey, but they are nothing of the sort.
Syrian Kurds are the majority population in the border region with Turkey. They created the SDF to resist Islamic State’s attempts to conquer the region five years ago, after the Syrian regular army pulled out of the region to fight rebels elsewhere in the country.
Erdogan is paranoid about the Kurds, because onefifth of Turkey’s own population are ethnic Kurds, and some of them have waged a guerrilla and terrorist struggle for decades, seeking an independent state. Other Kurdish minorities in the region, including those in Syria, are not at war with the Turks, but Erdogan didn’t like having the Kurdishrun SDF on his border.
Erdogan invaded last Saturday, and after about 36 hours the Syrian Kurds asked the Syrian army to come back and save them. They don’t love Syria’s dictator, Bashar alAssad, but it’s better than being invaded by Turkey and losing their homes permanently.
But there was something puzzling about all this. Why would Assad’s Russian allies approve a Syrian army move that might bring it into direct conflict with the Turkish army? After all, Vladimir Putin has been courting Erdogan as a potential ally (even though Turkey is a Nato member).
The Syrian army is now driving back into the northeastern part of the country unopposed by the SDF.
They will reoccupy the whole region (which is Syrian sovereign territory).
The Syrian Kurds may still be able to negotiate an autonomy deal with Damascus, on the grounds that they are Syria’s only nonArab minority. In any case, they have no other alternative.
Erdogan can either back down and be humiliated, or he can press on and risk a war not only with the Syrian army but also the Russian air force. That’s the way it looks on the surface, and maybe that’s all that’s going on here.
But we must also consider the possibility that the whole thing has been a charade, masterminded by the Russians, to get the Americans out of Syria and restore Syrian Government control over all of eastern Syria.
First Erdogan puts the frighteners on Trump in the famous phone call, and Trump abandons the Kurds and starts pulling the US troops out.
Then Erdogan launches the threatened invasion, and the Syrian Kurds understandably panic and make a deal with Damascus.
The Syrian army returns to the northern border for the first time in five years without having to fire a shot, carefully avoiding the points along the border where the Turks have already entered the country.
Erdogan declares a ceasefire and eventually withdraws his troops, stating that he is satisfied that the Kurdish ‘‘threat’’ has been ended because the Syrian army, not the SDF, now controls the border.
Even Iran is satisfied, because this eliminates the possibility that the US forces could be an obstacle to its planned secure corridor across Syria to Lebanon.
There’s no proof of this, but it makes sense.
The Russians are smart enough, and Trump is inept or compromised enough. It would explain why the Russians looked like they were backing the Syrians at the risk of alienating their new Turkish friend.
Maybe there was no risk. Maybe Erdogan was in on the deal.
And don’t worry about a revival of Islamic State.
For the thousands of Isis fighters now held prisoner by the Kurds, there can be no worse fate than falling into the hands of the Syrian army.
ANKARA: US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey yesterday and demanded the Nato ally stop a military incursion in northeast Syria.
Trump, who gave what critics say was a green light for Turkey’s assault by ordering US forces away from the conflict area, requested the ceasefire in a call with President Tayyip Erdogan.
‘‘The United States of America simply is not going to tolerate Turkey’s invasion in Syria any further. We are calling on Turkey to stand down, end the violence and come to the negotiating table,’’ Vicepresident Mike Pence told reporters.
Trump also announced plans to reimpose steel tariffs on Turkey and immediately halt negotiations on a $US100 billion ($NZ158.8 billion) trade deal.
The move was quickly criticised as too little, too late by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
‘‘His announcement of a package of sanctions against Turkey falls very short of reversing that humanitarian disaster,’’ she said.
Turkey aims to neutralise the Kurdish YPG militia, the main element of Washington’s Kurdish-led ally, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has been a key US ally in dismantling the jihadist caliphate set up by Islamic State militants in Syria.
Ankara regards the YPG as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.
Russiabacked Syrian forces yesterday took rapid advantage of the abrupt US retreat in Syria to deploy deep inside territory held by USbacked Kurdish forces south of the Turkish frontier. The US had announced plans for a full withdrawal from northern Syria less than 24 hours earlier.
Washington’s Kurdish former allies said they invited in the government troops as an emergency step to help fend off the Turkish assault, launched last week after what the Kurds called a US betrayal.
The Syrian army deployment is a victory for President Bashar al-Assad and his ally, Russia, giving them a foothold in the biggest remaining swathe of the country that had been beyond their grasp.
They will now face Turkish armed forces along a new front line hundreds of kilometres long.
Syrian state media reported the army entered Manbij, a town that had been controlled by a militia allied to the Kurds. Earlier, it pushed into Tel Tamer, a town on the strategically important M4 highway about 30km south of the frontier with Turkey.
State television showed residents welcoming Syrian forces into the town of Ain Issa, which lies elsewhere on the highway.
Turkish artillery has been pounding suspected Syrian Kurdish positions near a town in northeast Syria. Heavy bombardment of targets in the countryside of Ras alAyn has been reported. Turkish jets also carried out at least one air strike yesterday.
The swift Syrian Government deployments underscored how suddenly the strategy the US had pursued in Syria for the past five years had unravelled.
US Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined Trump’s critics yesterday to express concern over the Syria pullout, saying it would ‘‘invite the resurgence’’ of IS.