Mick Hartley

Matt Broomfield at UnHerd – Will Erdoğan crush the Syrian Kurds?

Syria’s two million Kurds have every reason to loathe Bashar al-Assad. His Baathist regime long repressed their identity, and there are many Kurdish activists among the countless people emerging, dazed and stumbling, from the dictatorship’s dungeons. But even as Kurds danced and toppled statues, the shadow of further violence cast a pall across the celebrations, especially now their bête noire Turkey is emerging as the dominant foreign power in a new Syria.

With Russian forces withdrawing in disarray, Washington wrong-footed, and Tehran neutered by Israel, Erdoğan appears the main winner from the extraordinary developments in Syria. Turkey’s own objectives in Syria are clear enough: liquidating the Kurdish presence on its border by establishing a 20-mile deep corridor of Turkish influence. In fact, it was reportedly Assad’s refusal to capitulate to this proposed violation of Syrian sovereignty which led Ankara to give an implicit green light to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military operation. Aleppo, the first city to fall to HTS’s blitzkrieg advance, was a former jewel in the Ottoman Empire’s crown. After its capture, the Turkish flag flew from the Aleppo citadel once more….

Beyond the Baath Party’s Arabist sentiments encouraging a dismissive view of Kurds, Assad likely felt able to ignore his country’s Kurds for other reasons. When compared with the Kurdish homelands in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, the arid badlands of Syrian Kurdistan were long dismissed as poor and undynamic. Yet the Kurds, bolstered by returning militants, battle-hardened during a dogged guerrilla war against Turkey, proved the only local force capable of defeating Islamic State. Along the way, they saved the Yazidis from genocide, and forged unexpected tactical partnerships with both Americans and local Arabs. As they drove Isis out of its former strongholds, including its erstwhile capital Raqqa, the Kurds helped forge a fragile multi-ethnic alliance alongside Arab Muslims, Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities. Known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), this alliance has since faced existential threats. That includes a deadly Islamic State insurgency; sporadic battles against Assad; and successive military occupations launched by Turkey — with Ankara bitterly opposed to the project in Kurdish-led autonomy on its southern border.

The situation now looks grim, with the Turks clearly determined to capitalise on their new-found leverage over the border in Syria.

At the time of writing, Turkey’s proxy militias are advancing on Kobanî, the Syrian Kurdish city where the Kurds first turned the tide against Isis in 2014, launching their partnership with the US and UK. But 10 years on, with bands of Turkish-armed Islamists once again appearing over the horizon and swearing vengeance on the Kurds, their nominal Western allies are nowhere to be seen.

Surprisingly, Broomfield doesn't mention Israel, the Kurds long-time – and only – ally in the region. The Israeli foreign minister has said that attacks on Kurds “must stop”. Where the US and UK seem unlikely to offer much of anything, the Israelis have shown they're made of sterner stuff. They have to be made of sterner stuff. Their determination to finish off Hamas and severely weaken Hezbollah – despite the bleatings of their Western allies that they should just stop, lie back, and take it – seems for the moment to be paying off spectactularly. But….are they prepared to take on Erdogan?