Syria, Turkey, and the Kurdish YPG

Juan Cole blogs about the Syrian Kurdish group YPG's adjustments to the Trump Administration's reported decision to withdraw remaining US troops from Syria: Abandoned by Trump, Syrian Kurds frantically turn to Moscow for Protection from Turkey Informed Comment 12/28/2018

Both Bashar al-Assad's government in Damascus and Tayyip Erdoğan's consider the Kurdish YPG a challenge to their national interests. The YPG currently controls part of Syrian territory. Turkey regards YPG as an ally of the PKK, an internal Turkish Kurdish opposition group that Turkey's government officially considers a terrorist group. The YPG has been cooperating with US forces against the Islamic State.

As Cole explains::

Turkey views the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia as indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas, which have been branded terrorists by both Turkey and the US. The Pentagon does not view the YPG in the same light, however, but the Pentagon is getting out of Syria so that its views will soon be irrelevant.

And he describes the current diplomatzic efforts as follows:

The Kurds now appear to be pinning their hopes on the establishment of a buffer zone between them and Turkey, to be established by the Syrian Arab Army. For Damascus to control the border areas could assuage Turkish fears that the YPG will conduct terrorist strikes over the border into Turkish territory against Turkish police or military in support of the PKK (which is now large based in the Qandil mountains of Iraq).

And, the Kurds hope they can convince Russia to lend them a security umbrella against Turkey, playing on Russia’s desire to see Syria reunified under a single government and Russian dislike of Turkish intervention.

Orhan Coskun and Lesley Wroughton report for Reuters (Syrian surprise: How Trump's phone call changed the war 12/28/2018) that even though Erdoğan wanted the US to remove its troops and its support for YPG, he may have gotten more than he actually wanted:

The U.S. withdrawal potentially frees Turkey’s military to push the YPG back from 500 km of border without risking a confrontation with American forces. It also removes a main cause of this year’s diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

But it also opens up an area of Syria far larger than anything Turkey had expected to fill, potentially pitting it against not just Kurdish forces but also the Damascus government - which is committed to regaining control of all of Syria - and its Russian and Iranian backers.

The YPG on Friday asked the Syrian government to take over the town of Manbij, which the Kurdish militia currently controls with U.S. support, to protect it from Turkish attack.

And if Turkish forces are to take on Islamic State in its last pocket of Syrian territory near the Iraqi border, they would first have to cross 250 km of territory controlled by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.

“Erdogan got more than he bargained for,” said Soner Cagaptay, Director of the Turkish Program at the Washington Institute. “He had asked the U.S. to drop the YPG, but not withdraw from Syria”.

Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. So any diplomatic or military mischief Turkey gets into with Syria or the YPG is something that could implicate the US in its alliance commitments.

For instance:

Washington is also grappling with what to do with weapons it provided to the YPG militia and promised to take back after the campaign against Islamic State ended.

Turkey says the weapons must be collected so they are not used against Turkish troops, but U.S. officials say they cannot disarm their own allies when the fight is not yet over.

Mara Karlin and Tamara Cofman Wittes write in Foreign Affairs ("Americas Middle East Purgatory: The Case for Doing Less" Jan-Feb 2019)

U.S. efforts to train, equip, and advise the Syrian Democratic Forces in the fight against ISIS are yet another reminder that none of Washington’s partnerships has purely operational consequences: U.S. support of the sdf, seen by Ankara as a sister to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has made the United States’ relationship with Turkey knottier than ever.

This is a discussion from Al Jazeera English on the current US position in Syria and its immediate region featuring political analyst Ali Al-Nashmi, former US Ambassdor Peter Galbraith who has been an advocate for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq Peter Galbraith, and interntional relations scholar Afzal Ashraf. What is Trump's strategy for Syria and the region? 12/27/2018: