Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that his country was preparing a ground attack on Kurdish positions in northern Syria. “We are continuing the air operation and will hit the terrorists by land with force at the most convenient time for us,” he told Turkish parliament.
The threat of escalation, after the start of an action against the Kurds, led to an immediate request from Moscow for the Turkish leader to avoid a new invasion, at the risk of seeing the violence in the region get out of control.
Erdogan, speaking to members of his AK (Justice and Development) party, said preparations were being made to tighten security in the corridor of cities leading to Kobani, the main Kurdish center in northern Syria.
“They are the source of our problems,” he said, referring then to the terrorist attack that hit Istanbul on the 13th, attributed to militants of the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), supported by their ethnic brothers on the southern border.
The renewed Turkish offensive responds to two aspects. One is domestic, where Erdogan’s tough stance, in power since 2003 (as prime minister until 2014, as president thereafter), in the face of Kurdish secession in the south of the country is a pillar of his popularity.
More important, however, is the external setting. Initiated in 2011, Syria’s civil war served as a playground for external powers to try to exert influence: the West, Turks, Iranians, Saudis, Emiratis and, since 2015, Russians have acted in the country. But Moscow and Ankara went deeper, with Vladimir Putin saving the local dictatorship from defeat and Erdogan staking everything on solving his problem with the Kurds.
Namely: Kurdistan is the largest unofficial nation in the world, with perhaps 40 million people, half of them in southern Turkey. In northern Syria, they have always had great autonomy, but they saw the civil war as an opportunity to expand that – which raised eyebrows in Ankara, seeing a reinforcement of the rearguard of its rebellious minority.
Thus, Erdogan allied himself with Arab militias against Kurds, while all fought against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, and against the fundamentalists of the Islamic State. In the end, Russia and Turkey avoided a major clash and shared responsibilities in northern Syria.
With Putin’s geopolitical weakening, due to the focus on the Ukrainian War, Erdogan took advantage of the moment to try to force his hand on the Kurds – moreover, there were six killed by terror in their main city a few Sundays ago.
Since Sunday (20), 471 targets have been hit in Syrian Kurdistan and also in Iraq, said Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. “The real target is Kobani,” Kurdish commander Mazloun Abdi told the Al-Monitor website.
“We hope that our arguments are heard,” said Russian negotiator Alexander Lavrentiev, warning against escalation. The day before, the Kremlin and the US State Department came together to criticize the Turkish action.
In Ukraine, Erdogan supports Kiev, but maintains good relations with Putin, as he does in other contentious areas, such as the South Caucasus and Libya. Recently, Ankara brokered a UN deal to export Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizers through the Black Sea, and signed a major project to distribute Russian natural gas to Europe.
With regard to the US, Turkey’s partner in the NATO alliance, the situation is even more complex. Erdogan, a Russian military customer who found himself ejected from producing the latest-generation F-35 fighter, wrested promises to supply F-16 planes to rejuvenate his fleet after threatening to veto Finland and Sweden from joining the military club — the other item was the extradition of rival activists in those countries.
In 2016, a coup against Erdogan was seen as the work of a US-protected cleric, and the Turkish leader has never forgiven the Americans for not extraditing him. But, weaving the careers of its own political tapestry, the Turk has managed to work its way between Washington and Moscow with cross concessions. And he seems to be picking it up again now.
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