Rojava is a semi-autonomous region administered by a radical-democratic Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Starosta speculates that Türkiye is setting out to disrupt the Rojavan government and neutralized the PYD as a fighting force. The PYD has been an ally of American forces - which are still actively involved in Syria - in fighting against the Syrian government and the Islamic State.
The recent strikes ordered by Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan targeted oil fields, which are a key source of revenue for Rojava. Turkish forces also struck grain storage facilities, hospitals, power plants, and schools, Starosta reports, and it is feared that Erdoğan could soon open a ground offensive.
The Russia-Ukraine War has given Türkiye new leverage over its fellow NATO allies this year. It has been playing a mediating role between Russia and Ukraine, and the Azerbaijan pipeline that runs through Türkiye has been more important than ever for European gas supplies. Starosta writes Erdoğans Krieg: Das Ende von Rojava? Blätter 1:2023 [published mid-December 2022]
At the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Bucharest at the end of November [2022], [German] Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also expressed concern to her Turkish counterpart and warned against expanding [Turkish] military action [against Rojava]. But the Turkish government does not have to fear consequences, let alone an intervention of the NATO partners, all to obvious it has been given a free hand – likely also against the background of Turkey's mediating role in the Ukraine war and the fact that Turkey plays a central role in preventing refugee movements to Europe. Direct consequences for the Turkish government and winter aid for the Kurdish regions would currently be more than appropriate. (my translation)She also notes that since Russia and the US currently dominate the air in the Rojava region, it’s unlikely that Türkiye would have mounted its recent attacks without some kind of permission from both countries.
Since deliberately targeted civilian facilities, particularly with the seemingly obvious aim of hurting the civilian population just before the beginning of winter, is a war crime, any US complicity or indulgence of these attacks in reprehensible. That may sound quaint in light of US conduct in Iraq. But it’s true, and all the NATO nations should be taking full account of that fact.
As Starosta bluntly puts it, “Once again, it is clear that this is not about human rights, democracy or even a "feminist foreign policy", but about geopolitics and the distribution of power in a new world order.“ Foreign Minister Baerback has spoken in support of the feminist foreign policy concept.
Starosta also stresses that the crippling of the Rojava government would also weaken the fight against the Islamic State, the Islamic terrorist group that was one of the uglier types of “blowback” from the Cheney-Bush Administration’s Iraq War.
There is also this recent development between Turkish ally Azerbaijan and Russian ally Armenia: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to drift away from Russia’s mediation toward that of the West.“ (Krivosheev, Kirill [2022]: Russian Peacekeepers Find Themselves Sidelined in Nagorno-Karabakh. Carnegie Politika 15.12.2022. <https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88651> [Accessed 2022-15-12])
On the Rojava situation, see also: Christopher Phillips, Why Rojava could face a slow death by a thousand cuts Middle East Eye 12/09/2022
Starosta, Antia (2022): Erdoğans Krieg: Das Ende von Rojava? Blätter 1:2023 [published mid-December 2022]
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