Turkish Onslaught

Turkey’s open military intervention in Syria, with the United States’ backing, evokes sharp condemnation from Russia and Iran, Syria’s allies in its war against terrorism. 

- John Cherian

THE TURKISH ARMY’S INCURSION INTO northern Syria, backed by tanks and artillery, opens another chapter in the ongoing brutal civil war in Syria. In the last week of August, the Turkish Army, with the United States’ air support, helped a rebel faction take control of the town of Jarabulus and its surrounding areas. The town was under the Daesh (Islamic State, or I.S.) control and was on the verge of being taken over by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). It was at this juncture that the Turkish government decided to intervene on the side of one of its proxy Syrian militias to keep the YPG out of the city. For the Turkish state, the biggest existential threat to national unity is the secessionist threat posed by the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the PKK. In fact, many PKK fighters are in the Syrian battlefield helping the YPG.

The Syrian Kurds have seized control of vast tracts of territory along the border with Turkey and have established a virtual de facto state. The government led by Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan has made it clear that it will under no circumstances accept an independent Kurdish state across its borders. Turkey has been livid with the U.S., its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally, for training, arming and financing the Syrian Kurds as they went about constructing a mini state. The PKK, which has been labelled a “terror group” by the U.S. State Department, has a free run in areas under YPG control. With sanctuaries in northern Syria and northern Iraq, the PKK now has the wherewithal to sustain a guerilla war in Turkey.