Turkey and Kurds can avoid war altogether
The current conflict between them is not an insurmountable barrier to common strategic and economic interests in the region
As the government of the United States shut down last week, two key American allies started fighting against each other: Turkey and the Kurds in Syria. Last week, United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attempted an exquisite balancing act around this dilemma, nodding not only to “Turkey’s legitimate security concerns”, but also to the “multiethnic group of fighters who are defending their home territory” inside Syria. What is the real US policy here, and what should it be?
Just as the Turks have long urged, the US now has a coherent policy in Syria. First, the underlying conflict between the Syrian people and President Bashar Al Assad’s regime should be resolved through a United Nations-led political process, leading to a unitary post-Al Assad state. And second, Iranian influence in Syria should be diminished, and Syria’s neighbours should be kept secure from all threats emanating from Syria.
The first goal satisfies Turkey’s two key objectives since 2011: Getting rid of Al Assad, and a unified Syria, with no independent Syrian Kurdistan under the possible rule of the erstwhile allies of Turkey’s enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) movement. The second goal, reducing Iran’s influence in Syria and ensuring that threats do not emanate from there, meets Turkey’s long-standing diplomatic interest in containing, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently said publicly, “Persian expansionism.”
Like those of the Arab states, Turkey’s interests are threatened by an expansionist Iran enabled by Russia, the two traditional foes of both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. But this convergence of interests does not mean that all is well between Washington and Ankara. Erdogan and most of the Turkish population have major problems with the US supporting the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as well as the joint Kurd-Arab military force it dominates, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The US has had difficulties convincing Turkey that its support for the PYD and SDF was, in US officials’ words, transactional and solely based on its utility against Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), in part because of the strong personal links forged between US forces on the ground and the Kurdish fighters, who have been highly effective against Daesh. A series of US blunders at every level has made things worse, including former US vice-president Joe Biden promising the Turks publicly that the PYD would retreat back across the Euphrates, US President Donald Trump’s promise to Erdogan to immediately cease weapons shipments to the Kurds, and a clumsy Pentagon announcement earlier this month that it would train SDF elements as a border force.
Setting up direct channels
But there is a way forward, tricky but essential. The first step is to encourage the PYD to further distance itself from the PKK, while reminding Turkey privately that the PYD has largely kept its 2012 commitment not to provide material support to the PKK inside Turkey.
The second step should be to set up direct channels for resumed discussions between the PYD and Turkey, and between the PYD and what remains of the mainstream, moderate Syrian Arab opposition that Turkey still supports.
The third step is tougher, yet urgently necessary. That is to reassure Turkey, even more explicitly than Tillerson just did, that the US will actively oppose any Kurdish secessionism or territorial expansion in Syria, and any future attempts by the PYD to collaborate with the PKK inside Turkey. In return, the US must credibly reassure its Syrian Kurdish friends that Washington will work with Turkey to forestall Turkish incursions or other military operations.
The “ancient ethnic conflict” between Turks and Kurds is not an insurmountable barrier to common strategic and economic interests — especially in the face of common enemies. The key is for the Kurds to renounce pan-Kurdish dreams. And the Turks must accept some degree of local Kurdish autonomy in neighbouring states. Such a compromise will serve Turkish, Kurdish and American interests.