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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Incursion into Syria

By Dr Naazir Mahmood
January 27, 2018

On January 22, Turkey expanded its military action against the Kurdish militia in Syria despite international criticism.

Turkey hopes to achieve a quick victory through this adventure against the militia, commonly known by its abbreviation, YPG (People’s Protection Units). With this new incursion, the Turkish forces have penetrated many kilometres deep into the Syrian territory.

The YPG comprises, in addition to the Kurd fighters, some Arabs too. This militant outfit is a close ally of the National Military Council. After the YPG was set up in 2004, it became the militant wing of the leftist Democratic Union Party which had been established just a year earlier in 2003. The two sister organisations have mostly worked in northern Syria and became the most formidable components of the Kurdish independence movement. Now the YPG is an integral part of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

This federation is a de-facto autonomous region that includes the areas of Afrin, Jazira, and Euphrates. This entire region has remained autonomous since 2012. The three areas are collectively called Rojava, a Kurdish word meaning the west. Since the north-western territories of Syria are dubbed Rojava, the civil war raging in this region is also called the Rojava Revolution. When the Syrian civil war started, the local population – consisting of Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds and Turkmens – developed the Rojava Constitution and started fighting for independence from the central government of Syria.

An interesting aspect of this revolution has been the active involvement of women, especially of Kurdish origin. The central government of Syria has contributed to the increasing deprivation among the locals, almost on the same pattern as happened in Turkey. Both the Syrian and the Turkish governments never accepted the Kurds as a separate nationality and have deprived millions of them of their fundamental rights by almost having rendered them stateless. Both countries refuse to acknowledge the Kurds as their citizens and have never granted them proper citizenship rights; their culture and language has also been suppressed.

In 2011, when the situation deteriorated, the Syrian government offered limited citizenship rights to the people of this region, but only around 6,000 Kurds were given citizenship documents. The ban on the Kurdish language continues. During the past five years, the Syrian writ in this region has ceased to exist. The early phase of the Syrian civil war was almost similar to that of Tunisia. In August 2011, the opposition parties formed the Syrian National Council, which decided to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Almost at the same time, the Free Syrian Army was also formed. It mainly attracted deserters of the Syrian army, and later some jihadi outfits also emerged. The Kurdish Democratic Federation and the National Council met in 2012 under the supervision of Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, who facilitated a seven-point agreement. With this agreement in place, the YPG started gaining victories and occupied Al-Malikiyah, a city just 10 kilometres away from the Turkish border. In 2012, when the Syrian army was busy in the Battle of Aleppo, the YPG established its autonomous administration in vast tracts of northern Syria. Syrian official flags were removed and new Kurdish standards were hoisted.

In January 2014, a formal declaration of autonomy was issued. By 2015, the YPG was getting American help and gained an upper hand over the Islamic State. The same year, the US encouraged the YPG to set up the Syrian Democratic Forces which included some non-Kurds as well, such as Arabs and Turkmens. The same forces played an instrumental role in the liberation of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State.

Now comes the question of Turkish involvement. Why is Turkey so bothered? Turkey considers the YPG an organ of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that is fighting for rights of the Kurds of southern Turkey. The PKK has been active in this region for around 35 years. Initially demanding complete independence, the party later reduced its demands to restoring all citizenship rights for of the Kurdish population. Successive Turkish governments have been reluctant in accepting these demands; the Turks see the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and have initiated one military action after the other against it.

Turkey claims that it is achieving its targets in the region of Afrin easily, whereas the YPG claims to have put up a stiff resistance by destroying many tanks of the Turkish army. In this situation, Nato has not announced its support for Turkey. However, the Turkish representative in Nato has demanded that Turkey be supported by its Nato allies, failing which Turkey would reconsider its Nato membership. It appears that the US has used the YPG against the IS, and Turkey has opposed this American policy.

According to the prime minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, the aim of this incursion is to establish a 30-km deep ‘safe zone’ within Syria. Turkey does not want any autonomous Kurdish regions in northern Syria that can serve as a role model to the Kurds in Turkey. The Turkish army has claimed that it has destroyed over 50 targets with its land and air strikes and President Erdogan has vowed to crush both the PKK and YPG. It is not clear how he would achieve something past governments have been unable to achieve.

Erdogan’s insistence on bombarding targets in northern Syria has angered Bashar al-Assad who has condemned this operation, which is codenamed Olive Branch. In addition to the YPG, the Hizbul Ittihad is also being targeted. And after Afrin the next expansion will include Manbij, which was liberated from Isis by the Kurd forces with American support in 2016. In the changing scenario, the American role is intriguing. The US has announced the formation of a 30,000-strong force comprising not only Kurds and Arabs, but also some new entrants. The aim of these new forces is to control the border region between Syria and Turkey.

Turkey has been opposing the formation of any such force with the help of the allies. However, the US wants to fight against the IS, Russian and Syrian forces by using the newly-formed and trained forces. With this incursion, Turkey is making it clear to the US that it will not allow any Kurdish domination in the region that could become a battlefield for proxy war among America, Russia, Syria and Turkey – with the Kurds becoming the main victims. This region increasingly looks like another emerging Afghanistan.

In these proxy wars it is the locals who suffer the most by being used as cannon fodder by foreign powers. The Kurds have to be wise and follow the Iraqi Kurds who did not insist on implementing their plan for complete independence and kept a window open for negotiation with the central government in Iraq. Turkey should also grant full citizenship rights to its Kurdish citizens so that they can live peacefully and fulfil their artistic, cultural, and linguistic aspirations. The world community should condemn the American and Russian involvement in this region and at the same time Turkey should also be forced to stop its military actions against the Kurds.

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk