East of Euphrates

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signaled a new operation against the PKK in Syria at the Turkish Defense Industry Summit in Ankara on December 12. The next day, Turkish fighter jets bombed PKK targets in northern Iraq, near Sinjar. Is this just a show of force of the Turkish political leadership or does Turkey have real security concerns? Is this the war of one man or a nation? I think these questions need to be answered especially in Western capitals...The general idea among the Turkish public is that the U.S. is trying to establish a “garrison statelet” in Syria. Thousands of trucks have been carrying weapons, ammunition and construction material to the east of the Euphrates. Turkey has intelligence reports about the construction of tunnels into Turkey, and since the cities are divided just by a railway at the border, this is a great security concern. Obviously. Turkey’s security concerns are real and cannot be ignored. This is not the war of a man but a nation. This fact should not be ignored when analyzing Turkey’s attitudes. Turkey has proved herself that she is capable of conducting such risky and difficult operations...Furthermore, the basis of U.S. policy of building a PKK-YPG statelet in Syria is weak. It should be remembered that the population of northern Syria is mainly Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and devout Muslim Kurds, who are far from the PKK-YPG Marxist-Leninist ideology. Turkey’s quick success in the Olive Branch operation in Afrin and the transition period afterward is proof of PKK-YPG weakness in northern Syria. While the region is sliding to a Kurdish-Arab ethnic war, U.S. policy in Syria is provoking Turkey to act and this policy seems unsustainable.