Turkish Invasion of Syria and Its Attempt to Ease Internal Conflict

On 6 October 2019, US President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria, abandoning their Kurdish allies to take matters into their own hands. Experts consider this a dangerous act that may force the Kurds to seek cooperation with the Syrian government they have been fighting against (Marcus, 2019). Not long after the US withdrawal, Turkish forces and its Syrian rebel allies, popularly known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), piled up by the Turkish-Syrian border and were announcing its imminent cross into Syria, threatening direct military intervention in fighting the Kurdish-led forces (Aljazeera, 2019). On 9 October 2019, Turkey’s defense minister claimed that Turkish troops had crossed into Syria alongside the FSA. Reports indicated that the ground offensive on northeastern Syria began hours after the Turkish Air Force bombarded the border region (Aljazeera, 2019). This article will analyze the 2019 Turkish invasion of Syria and why the act is crucial within the Turkish geostrategy.

As a context to the area's politics, the northern region of Syria is highly populated by Syrian Kurds. The city has long been claimed as a part of the historical geo-cultural region of Kurdistan. In a concurrent use, the word refers to the following areas: southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and northeastern Iran (Bengio, 2014). As the Syrian Civil War began in 2011 as a part of the broader 2011 Arab Spring protest, factions began to appear in fighting for supremacy over the fragmenting nation, with foreign powers putting their support upon the belligerents (BBC, 2011). The power-vacuum areas of Kurdish-majorated northern Syria came under the protection of the Kurdish militias. Its influence increased as unprotected settlements were protected against the FSA and Islamist militias in the region (Abdulmajid, 2012). The US interest in the Kurdish militias grew as they showed a remarkable capability to combat the growing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian Army. The alliance between the People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias and the US Army became a worrying issue for neighboring Turkey (Francis, 2017).

Kurdish nationalism has been considered an undesirable problem by the Turkish government. For the last 30 years, Turkey and its Kurdish population have experienced a series of violent conflicts that have claimed over 45,000 lives. In 2013, the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, called for a ceasefire and the beginning of an era of peace and diplomacy. Militias began to move from Turkey, and some arrived in Iraq in May 2013. The PKK has been a nuisance in the country, causing various atrocities and violence against both the Turkish government and civilians, and hoped that the proceeding dialog between the two sides in 2013 put an end to thirty years of hostility (Pike, 2020). However, by 2014, no concrete steps were being made from the peace talks. In October 2014, a massive riot consisting of around 15 million Kurds caused the death of 35 people after Ankara refused to aid the besieged Syrian Kurds in Kobani from an ISIL attack. To add to the growing discontentment, Turkey bombarded Kurdish rebel bases within the country on 14 October 2014, ultimately ending the short-lived peace talks between the two sides. Although Ocalan has declared an end to violence against his PKK followers, the ceasefire officially collapsed in July 2015, jump-starting the conflict in the southeastern Turkish region ever since. With the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey believed to have ties with the PKK, having now come under the support of the US, the circumstances become dangerous for Erdogan’s administration (Pike, 2020).

In October 2015, the Syrian Defense Force (SDF) was founded to establish a secular, democratic, and decentralized Syria. The SDF is an alliance of militias, primarily composed of Kurdish Arab and Assyrian militias, mainly led by the Kurdish-dominated YPG, and has taken over most of the northeastern territories of Syria along the Syrian-Turkish border (Francis, 2017). By the end of 2016, Syria’s Kurds adopted a draft constitution, creating the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava. Although there had been no official recognition of the newly established state by this time, the Russians and the US saw Rojava’s effectivity, most notably its SDF, in combatting ISIL. The US has been an ardent supporter of the Syrian Kurds, while Russia even invited them to the talks in Geneva but was canceled due to Turkey’s refusal (Karam, 2016; The New Arab, 2016). The tension between Turkey and Rojava has always been high, shrouded by distrust and fear. Thus, it has become expected that Turkey would sooner or later conduct a confrontation, and the immediate invasion after the US withdrawal has been considered unsurprising.

Before the invasion, Erdogan had long threatened to launch an offensive operation into SDF-held territory with the goal to establish a 32-kilometer “safe zone,” which spans 480 kilometers across the Syrian side of the border. In his proposal, he planned to use this area to resettle its 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey. An alternative to an invasion was then made between the US and Turkey in setting up a security mechanism by the Syrian side of the border, a YPG-free zone where the US and Turkish troops carried out joint patrols within the area. At the same time, the YPG fighters and heavy weapons withdrew themselves from the territory. However, on 6 October, President Erdogan announced to President Trump that a cross-border operation would be soon carried out. With the US refusing to have anything to do with the operation, Trump declared the US withdrawal from northern Syria, abandoning its allies and disconnecting itself from the complexity that has yet to come (BBC, 2019).

Unlike its barren and dry southern areas, the northern part of Syria is dominated by fertile plains and dotted by dozens of villages and towns. The Turkish invasion has caused around 2.2 million inhabitants under threat, with 1.3 million became in dire need of humanitarian aid. More than 150,000 people are forced to leave their homes behind due to the Turkish offensive and putting the risk of thousands of former ISIL fighters fleeing from SDF’s detention camps (BBC, 2019). The invasion has inevitably caused an alarming situation for many global powers at stake in the conflict. Even the US, which had recently removed itself from the area, threatened to crush the currently dying Turkish economy if its forces went “off-limits” (Aljazeera, 2019).

Although Turkish officials had stated that the “safe zone” was to be established as a resettlement zone for Syrian refugees, many of its allies doubted its true intentions. It has been widely known that Kurds have become more of a problem in Turkey, mostly incited by the PKK. In addition, the establishment of the Kurdish-dominated Rojava has put a major national security threat to Turkey, putting its southern border at risk of Kurdish insurgency. With most of its 3.6 million Syrian refugees being Sunni Arabs, mainly living in the western region of Syria, there have been rising concerns over the impact it will bring from a drastic demographic change in the area (Evans, 2019). Nevertheless, there have been speculations that the radical demographical change has always been the original plan for Turkey’s “safe zone” proposal. The raging discontentment from its Kurdish populous has caused the resume of Turkish-Kurdish conflict in the country, and its increasing urgency has left Erdogan to engage in an immediate offensive to secure this “safe zone” quickly. An Arab-dominated zone along the Syrian-Turkish border will cut off a direct connection between Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated territories to the Kurdish-dominated Rojava, severing the link of the PKK to its possible allies.

To conclude, the US withdrawal from northeastern Syria has caused a massive hit for its former SDF allies. With no foreign backing, the SDF is left to take the Turkish offensive into its own hands. The withdrawal also led to the establishment of cooperative-controlled territories between the SDF and the loyalist forces to prevent further Turkish offensive into SDF regions. After analyzing the history of the intricate conflicts in the region, most notably Turkey, it can be said that the long hostile relations between Turkey and the Kurds have played a vital role in its sudden invasion of northern Syria. The proposed “safe zone” is, in a way, to solve its increasingly concerning border security from Kurdish insurgency within its territory. A sudden demographical change by its southern, Kurdish-dominated border may help ease its concern over internal conflict. Therefore, the Turkish invasion of Syria was primarily decided out of its fears over domestic affairs and dimmed crucial in securing the country's stability.

References:

• Al Jazeera. (2019, October 10). Turkey begins ground offensive in northeastern Syria. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/turkey-begins-ground-offensive-northeastern-syria-191009212025006.html

• BBC. (2019, October 14). Turkey’s Syria offensive explained in four maps. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49973218

• Bengio, O. (2015). Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building In A Fragmented Homeland. Austin: University of Texas Press.

• Evans, D. (2019, October 8). Turkey’s plan to settle refugees in northeast Syria alarms allies. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-refugees-graphi-idUSKBN1WN28J

• Francis, E. (2017, February 15). Syrian Kurdish groups expect U.S. support, will fight any Turkish advance. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-kurds-idUSKBN15U24R

• Karam, Z. (2016, March 17). Syria’s Kurds declare de-facto federal region in north. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://apnews.com/882b101de1024e63bd9525bb32c708e3

• Marcus, J. (2019, October 7). Trump makes way for Turkey operation against Kurds in Syria. BBC. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49956698?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2y7t/kurds&link_location=live-reporting-story

• Pike, J. (2020). Kongra-Gel Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/pkk.htm

• The New Arab Agencies. (2016, December 30). Syria Kurds adopt constitution for autonomous federal region. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2016/12/30/syria-kurds-adopt-constitution-for-autonomous-federal-region