US-Kurd ties in Syria create rift with Turkey
To Ankara, Washington’s most reliable allies are mere terrorists
They seek to sweep away borders and establish a stateless society. Their female fighters struggle and die beside male comrades. Their leftist, anti-Islamist image has attracted US and European volunteers. The Kurdish fighters who are battling Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria are regarded by the United States as its most reliable partners there. But to Turkey, a Nato ally of the US, these Kurds are terrorists.
The Kurdish group, known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, is now facing an escalating battle with Turkish forces in northwestern Syria, complicating US policy.
The group has deep ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK. Both Turkey and the United States consider the PKK to be a terrorist organisation for its violent separatist movement inside Turkey.
While YPG leaders play down their PKK ties, areas they control are festooned with photos of the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, viewed by Turks the same way Americans viewed Osama bin Laden.
One thing is clear: The US, which has relied heavily on Kurdish fighters to push the IS out of northeastern Syria, has consistently understated the complexities of its alliance with the Kurds, a policy some analysts call wilful ignorance.
“Obviously the US chose to look the other way, out of what it deemed to be the necessity of building an alliance to quickly capture territory from Daesh,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group, using the Arabic acronym of the IS.
“The US has sound reasons to continue to support the YPG,” he said, “but doing so while the PKK maintains an active insurgency against its Nato ally is an unsustainable situation.”
The US military’s official partner in Syria is a militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes Arab and Assyrian fighters but is dominated by the YPG. The Americans de-emphasise such details.
But the co-operation with the YPG, including arming and training the fighters and providing them with air support, has put the US on a collision course with Turkey.
Last weekend Turkey launched a military operation against the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwestern Syria and it is now threatening to expand the operation to the east, into areas where Kurdish forces are directly backed by the US military.
The US has sought to differentiate between the Kurds it supports and those in Afrin, whom it does not, a distinction the Kurds themselves do not recognise.
“They are not different parts at all, and they cannot be divided in any way, not politically, not economically, not militarily,” said Newaf Xelil, a Kurdish political analyst in Germany and a former spokesman for the party affiliated with the YPG. “For us, it is all Kurdistan and we are now defending Afrin with all we have.”
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump urged his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to use restraint and avoid any situation that could lead to clashes between the Turkish and US militaries.
Disputing the White House’s description of the call, Turkish officials denied that Mr Trump had made such a request.
YPG leaders say theirs is a homegrown movement that sprang up to defend civilians in the early days of Syria’s war and against offensives by the IS.
That role, and the backing of the US, has transformed the group into the most prominent political and military force in northeastern Syria.
Formerly an impoverished and marginalised minority, Syria’s Kurds now administer substantial territory, where they are teaching Kurdish in schools and setting up local administrations.
US officials have long sought to minimise the YPG’s ties to the PKK, but Turkey is enraged that the US is giving military support to a group that idealises Ocalan, the sole inmate of an island prison in the Sea of Marmara.
Many YPG leaders speak openly of their history with the PKK, and Kurds from Iraq, Iran and Turkey have joined the movement in Syria.
Mr Bonsey said there had been hope among the Americans that they could pull the YPG away from the PKK.
But such a prospect appears unlikely — especially with the Kurds now uncertain that they have solid support from the US, which has sent mixed messages about how strongly it would back them against a Turkish onslaught.
The US ambivalence was clear on Wednesday in comments by Thomas P Bossert, Mr Trump’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I’m not in any way critical of the Turkish decision, but I’m just praying for their longer-term strategic patience,” Mr Bossert told reporters.
Asked if the Turks should withdraw, Mr Bossert said: “I would prefer it if for now they would remove themselves from the capital of Afrin.”
The US effectively gave a green light to the current Turkish offensive against Afrin, urging restraint but emphasising that it does not work with the YPG there.
The YPG remains the predominant part of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
US officials have told the Kurds that the US will not fight Turkey for them. With a diminished need to fight the IS in Syria, US support for the Kurds could dwindle.