Since the foundation of modern Turkey in 1923 with Ataturk as president, the Turkish Government has insisted that only Turks live in the country. Since then, the most significant non-Turkish minority, the Kurds (14.5 million), have practically had to make the choice of either renouncing their identity or calling themselves “Mountain Turks”. Whenever the Kurds renounced this situation of systematic erasure, either peacefully or with arms, the Turkish Republic declared them to be “undermining the Republic.” Today they are simply called terrorists.

Just two years after the foundation of the Turkish state, in 1925, an uprising for an independent Kurdistan was led by a religious leader called Shaikh Said. It was put down quickly. While Said and 36 of his followers were executed, they still paved the way for the large-scale Kurdish revolts that shook the country in the southeastern provinces of Ararat and Dersim in 1930 and 1937 respectively. These uprisings were too, met with the iron fist of the state.

In the aftermath of the Dersim rebellion of 1937, The British consul at Trabzon – the diplomatic post closest to Dersim – spoke of brutal and indiscriminate violence and made an explicit comparison with the Armenian massacres of 1915. “Thousands of Kurds,” he wrote, “including women and children, were slain; others, mostly children, were thrown into the Euphrates River. Thousands of others in less hostile areas, who had first been deprived of their cattle and other belongings, were deported to provinces in Central Anatolia.”

Kurds have accused the government’s successive attempts of suppressing their identity, through such means as the banning of the Kurdish language in society, education, print and media, as efforts to deny their existence. Ataturk believed the unity and stability of a country lay in unitary political identity, relegating cultural and ethnic distinctions to the private sphere. “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk” the adage of the state used to go, and if you did not want to, then you would have to keep that to yourself.

However, many Kurds did not relinquish their identities and language, which only led to the deepening of their legacy of resistance. Today, in Turkey this has been embodied to many Kurds within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which was formed in 1978 to advocate for Kurdish self-determination.

A large-scale armed conflict between Turkey’s armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) occurred throughout the 1980s and 1990s, leaving over 35,000 dead. Things only started to get worse before they seemed to slightly get better.

Recent moves by the Turkish government, after almost 100 years of insurgency, have provided Kurds with limited rights and freedoms, particularly in regards to the Kurdish language, education, and media.

However, Kurdish politicians and activists still face pressure.

The government has arrested 11 Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputies, including the party’s co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, 1473 members of HDP and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and also has seized the administration of 63 municipalities since a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The HDP and DBP are criminalized, precisely because they are seen as being “pro-Kurdish.” Although Erdogan has branded himself as a reformer, the Kemalist roots of the Turkish state are still fully intact.

And so it is no surprise then why Turkey’s President Erdogan has his eyes set on Syria’s Kurds. Erdogan takes Ataturk’s view to its logical conclusion:  there can not be an autonomous Kurdistan in Turkey and never one close to Turkey’s border. He fears that the successful political experiment in northern Syria could help embolden the cause of Kurds within Turkey.

Kurdish renaissance

In northern Syria, also known as Rojava, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) came to life in 2011. The Kurdish YPG allied with Arab, Assyrian, Turkmen, Christian, Armenian and Yazidi populations in order to form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is the alliance that, with the support of the U.S. but against the will of Ankara, has been fighting against the Islamic State with considerable success. It was the SDF, for example, which dislodged IS from its symbolic capital in Raqqa.

Afrin, one of the three autonomous cantons in Rojava, has been under control of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG since 2012. It lies on the border with Turkey like other two cantons of Rojava. Erdogan and the ruling establishment of the Turkish republic find this troubling.

The current situation

On January 20^th, Erdogan announced an offensive against Afrin. He claimed to be attacking after the United States made explicit that they will train fighters to set up a border force that could help neutralize a threat by IS. Many of those fighters, the United States promised, would include their Kurdish partners on the ground. This infuriated Erdogan.

But Erdogan had already planned an attack on Afrin months prior, and said so explicitly. The plan was in the making for months, the border-force, depending on who you ask, was either a trigger to speed up the process or a convenient excuse.

Now, it is the third week of indiscriminate artillery attacks and aerial strikes in Afrin, which have already caused a huge number of civilian deaths. There are two military characteristics of the attacks on Afrin. The first is an aerial campaign waged by the Turkish Air Force. The second is a ground invasion by the Turkish Armed forces, which is being aided by the jihadist wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). On Sunday, January 21st, Turkish ground troops entered Afrin with, in their own words, 25000 fighters from the ‘Free Syrian Army’ trained by Ankara.

Turkey calls it ‘Operation Olive Branch’, which claims to seek the “liberation” of the Kurdish enclave “from terrorists”. Notwithstanding the name of the operation though, in its third week Turkey’s offensive into Afrin has led to civilian deaths, torture, the destruction of historical heritage, video footage of a mutilated fighter of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and various propaganda videos released by FSA militants calling for a “Jihad” in Afrin and death to the “atheist Kurdish pigs”.

Erdogan hoped the offensive would be brief. Turkey’s Army and allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) militias, however, have struggled thus far to gain military ground in Afrin. So, it is possible that Operation Olive Branch will take longer than expected, that is, if it does not fail entirely.

Expandability of freedom of expression

Erdogan has criticized opponents of the military intervention, particularly inside the country, as ‘traitors and terror sympathizers’.

Turkey’s authorities have cautioned all dissidents not to protest, a warning which is especially directed against members of the opposition party, HDP.

As the authorities put it themselves, if people turned up to demonstrations, then the security forces will act “immediately” and “severely”.

Turkey has also ordered the arrest of 31 people, including the co-leader of HDP over opposition to the military’s offensive in Syria.

Since the launch of Operation Olive Branch, more than 600 people have been detained for protests or social media posts against the offensive.

The world is watching

Even though the YPG has contributed the most to virtually eliminating the IS in Syria, the international reaction against the operation in Afrin is rather chilling.

The European Union is absolutely silent because of its arms deals with Erdogan, investments in Turkey and the refugee deal. The refugee deal entails that Turkey take in most of the refugees in our current global refugee crisis, in exchange for aid, and influence on the region. Turkey, in other words, uses its refugee population as leverage against Europe.

And as for Russia, it has already made a secret agreement with Turkey in Syria:

Turkey can take its course in Afrin and the surrounding areas in exchange for Moscow and Damascus winning the power to suppress the opposition against Assad in southern Syria successfully.

The airspace of Afrin is under the control of Russia.

Idlib is under the control of Jihadist groups that are supported by Turkey.

Thus, Erdogan is exchanging his jihadist groups’ last stronghold with an operation to attack Afrin.

And the U.S.? Reasons behind the silence

The Kurds themselves have asked the US-led coalition to take action against Turkey’s Afrin offensive.

But the U.S wonders why it should.

Washington does not need the YPG as it did before. The Islamic State in Syria has almost been defeated. Washington also does not want to spoil its already tense relations with Ankara. Most importantly though, Washington wants to see the SDF being taught a lesson for ideological reasons.

The political system of Rojava can be followed in its constitution, the “Charter of the Social Contract”. The constitution provides that all residents shall enjoy the fundamental right of gender equality and freedom of religion. It also provides for property rights.

Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader imprisoned in Turkey’s Imrali, has been taken up as the iconic leader in Rojava whose ideas shaped the region’s society and politics. In prison, Ocalan wrote about social ecology, direct democracy, and libertarian municipalism, a confederation of local citizens’ assemblies. In March 2005, Ocalan issued his “Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan” calling upon citizens “to create municipal assemblies, which he called ‘democracy without the state”.

Ocalan envisioned these assemblies as forming a confederation, united for the purposes of self-defence and enshrined with the values of anti-capitalism, environmentalism, gender equality, and ethnic, cultural, and religious pluralism.

The U.S. has not openly confronted the ideology behind the most efficient force in the fight against the Islamic State. And partially because they felt that they have not had to, insofar as Syrian Kurds made up a vast majority of those fighting against IS.

However, the U.S also never hid its discomfort and confusion.

When the SDF defeated IS, the Syrian Democratic Forces celebrated with a huge banner of Abdullah Ocalan. The United States went on record to publicly condemn this act. “The coalition does not approve of the display of divisive symbols and imagery at a time in which we remain focused on the defeat of Daesh (IS) in Syria” coalition spokesperson Colonel Ryan Dillon, said in response to the act. The U.S embassy in Turkey was more straightforward, “he should not be celebrated” they wrote in a statement.

Uncomfortable the United States may have been, but they never had an opportunity to intervene.

By staying silent on Turkey’s Afrin attacks, the United States has seized a unique opportunity to take a stand against the ideology of Rojava. By that, they indirectly give the SDF a message which can be understood as something along the lines of the following: “we appreciate your efforts in the fight against IS; however, there is one thing we hate more than radical Islamism, and it is socialism. So, either abandon your leader and ideology or we “might” forget that we are allies.”

Turkey’s offensive against the Kurds in Afrin has not been condemned. The statement by the U.S. State Department, on the contrary, states: “We continue to support Turkey, our ally within NATO and an important partner in the fight against the Islamic State.”

Afrin is just the beginning

According to the latest reports, Erdogan no longer wants to limit the so-called “Operation Olive Branch” just within the confines of Afrin and its surrounding areas. Rather, Erdogan wants to strip all land controlled by the Kurds in Syria.

Inconveniently, American bases of the anti-IS coalition stand in his way. Indeed, it is still plausible and not a fantasy, that troops from Turkey and the U.S., both NATO allies, could come face to face. The question is how Washington would respond if Turkey advances towards territory it claims to be protecting.

Soon, the U.S. will have a difficult choice to make. Either it will have to stand with an out of control dictator, or it will have to “tolerate” the socialist SDF, which proposes the only reliable social program for establishing peace in Syria and arguably the broader Middle East.

http://theregion.org/article/12849-hard-decision-in-afrin-will-the-u-s-choose-turkey-over-syria-039-s-kurds

what catalysed it?

Isolation

On January 20th, The Turkish armed forces and affiliated rebel groups operating under the banner of the “Free Syrian Army” began attacking the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin, a relatively peaceful area in northwest Syria.  Prior to the attack, Afrin was under the protection of Russian forces, who withdrew when Turkey and Turkish backed FSA forces launched their attack. Kurdish officials believe that an agreement between Turkey and Russia provided the green light for the attack.

For the people of Afrin, It was never a question of if Turkey would attack the enclave in Northwestern Syria, but only a question of when.

The Democratic Autonomous Administration of Afrin had already engaged in often minor, intermittent clashes with Turkish forces on the border for years. And for the past few months, as Erdogan was warning of a potential “Operation Euphrates Sword” that would aim to expel the Syrian Kurdish PYD group from Afrin, Syrian Kurds began to raise the alarm.

Ankara claims that the Womens’ Protection Units (YPJ), Peoples’ protection Units (YPG) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are all a Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency in Turkey for decades. The PYD, which governs the majority Kurdish area of Afrin, claims to be organizationally separate.

Erdogan then, in his words, launched his attack on Afrin to prevent what he calls a “terror corridor” from being formed along the Turkey/Syria border. The YPG forces, on the other hand, have insisted that while they have no intention to attack Turkey, they will defend Afrin with all that they have got. And of course, they reject any insinuation that they are a terror group, a claim only recognised by the Turkish Government.

For weeks now, authorities in Afrin have been demanding protection from NATO’s second largest army.

The International community, has thus far, responded with silence. Aside from a very tame statement of condemnation (which was later retracted) by President Macron of France, the very international coalition which supported the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS), did nothing to prevent an escalation of violence.

Neither did the United States nor European countries want to risk their relationship with a NATO member, and whereas the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson expressedfull solidarity with Turkey, Germany continued to maintain its lucrative arms dealswith Ankara.

In other words, the U.S, European powers, and Russia did nothing to prevent Turkey and Turkish backed FSA forces to attack Afrin. With nowhere left to go, the International community left Afrin to the mercy of whoever was willing to protect them in this state of existential abandonment.

In such circumstances, why instead of calling for reinforcements, would the Kurds of Afrin ask Assad for help?

Geography and War  

Afrin has not only lost moral and material support from its former tactical allies, it has also been kept in a state of geographic isolation in the theatre of the Syrian civil war.

Afrin which lies in the north-west of Syria is surrounded by hostile forces. To the north lies the Turkish State. To the south, Assad loyalists and the Syrian Arab Army are stationed. In the East and West, Turkish backed FSA forces have been preparing to attack the enclave for years, under the command of Ankara, which insists that the Islamic State and the YPG are two faces of the same coin (nevermind the fact that the latter has sacrificed so much to ensure the defeat of ISIS).

In other words, even though the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a leading member, controls most of Northern Syria (after having expelled IS), they are unable to send reinforcements because they are blocked by Turkish backed rebels. If they did decide to do so, the reinforcements would have to come through Assad territory.

This state of affairs was constructed with forethought by military officials in Ankara.

In 2016, Erdogan launched Operation Euphrates Shield. Its expressed aim was to attack both the YPJ/YPG and ISIS. In reality, it sought to prevent an advance by the Syrian Democratic Forces from linking Afrin with the rest of territory held by Kurds.

Operation Euphrates Shield was not about defeating IS, it was about ensuring that Afrin would stay geographically distant from the rest of the territory held by Kurdish forces in Northern Syria. Keeping Afrin isolated, in turn, was a way for Erdogan to have leverage over Syrian Kurdish forces.

Turkey has not only backed rebels that hold Euphrates Sheild territory, it has also supported rebels from Idlib, which attack Afrin from the other side. Idlib is virtually under the governance of Jihadist groups. But Turkey has influence over the rebels there as well, which have been enlisted in the battle against Afrin.

The geography of the Syrian battlefield, in other words, has further compelled the YPG to demand that the Syrian government do what it can to prevent Turkey and Turkish backed FSA forces from invading their territory.

What is the relationship between the Syrian Kurds and other groups on the Syrian battlefield? 

The Kurdish forces of Syria have mainly gained their territory in their battle against the most immediate threat to the peoples’ of Northern Syria, the so-called Islamic State.

Much of Northern Syria, which was previously held by the Islamic State, is now under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces — a coalition of the Kurdish YPG with other rebel groups in the region. But it wasn’t always like this.

In 2012, Assad repositioned his forces away from Northern Syria in order to fight in the strongholds of the Free Syrian Army. Whereas critics of the PYD have insinuated that this was an agreement between Assad’s government and the Kurds, there is no evidence of such an agreement taking place.

This left a power vacuum in the North. Kurdish forces immediately seized the opportunity to administer control over areas largely inhabited by Kurds. They instituted a system of direct democracy called democratic confederalism and began to demand a decentralized Syria as a path forward for the war-torn country. Areas that fell under their control included Afrin — which was one of the first cities to rise up against Assad — Kobane and Qamishlo.

But then the Islamic State emerged as a coalition of increasingly hard-line former rebels began to radicalize. They attempted to attack Kobane, the capital of the democratic confederalist project.

The Kurds, fighting under the YPG banner, resisted the Islamic State for days.

The United States, feeling that the Kurds could be a reliable partner in the battle against IS, aided in the defence of Kobane.

From then on, the YPG, and an assortment of rebel groups in Syria have been the leading force against IS in Northern Syria. Every territory captured by the YPG was brought under the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, a political body that seeks to forge a decentralized, multi-ethnic polity.

Being in this position has also meant that Syrian Kurdish forces have developed rivalries against the two other warring sides, the decentralized Free Syrian Army brigades and the Syrian Government.  Since the beginning of the civil war, the YPG have held a position of neutrality. This has meant that depending on the circumstance, FSA forces and the Syrian government were either harsh foes or tactical allies.

Indeed, this has even translated into deadly clashes with both, over the course of the civil war. In 2014 for example, the YPG entered into a tactical alliance with FSA brigades in the fight against IS, under an operation entitled Euphrates Volcano. Many of those very same groups are now within the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of forces that helped expel IS from Northern Syria, and continue to fight against IS in the province of Deir Ez-Zor. These FSA battalions also constitute the anti-Ankara wing of the Free Syrian Army.

In that very same year, however, the YPG also fought against other battalions of the FSA in Aleppo. Its foes included various FSA outfits like Fatah Halab, Ahrar AlSham, and the Mountain Hawks Brigade.

The same complicated relationship can be seen with the Syrian Government. Take the two months of June and July of 2015 as an emblematic example. In June 2015, the YPG and Syrian government loyalists clashed in the city of Qamishli, according to a report by ARA news. In July 2016, AFP reported that in Hasakah, Syrian Government forces entered into a short-lived tactical alliance to fight encroaching IS forces in Hasakeh

Are Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian Government in an alliance? No. But backed into a corner, Kurdish officials felt compelled to make this decision out of desperate circumstances. Just as they did in Hasakah against IS.

Historically, how have Syrian Kurds related to the Syrian Government? 

On a brief historical note, Syrian Kurds were often the subjects of some of the most brutal measures taken by the Assad dynasty to forcefully Arabize Syria. In the 1962 census conducted in the province of Jazira, around 120,000 Kurds were stripped of their citizenship. Those that became categorized as foreigners lost property rights, found it difficult to find work, and participate in politics.

In the 1980’s, after the Kurdistan Workers Party’ decided to launch an armed struggle for Kurdish self-determination against the Turkish State, they were given sanctuary by Hafez Assad, who had a dispute over Euphrates water with Ankara. Allowing Kurdish Guerrillas into Syria, however, opened up space for a politicization of Syria’s Kurds, who began to idolize PKK co-founder, Abdullah Ocalan. And whereas it has been commonplace to state, as Amberin Zaman recently has in an NY Times op-ed, that the PKK was also put to use “as a distraction for his own restless Kurdish population.”, this explanation both infantilizes and fails to account for the support that Syria’s Kurds have for Ocalan today.

In fact, despite the tactical and non-confrontational attitude that Ocalan had with Damascus, the PKK constructed a deep affinity between Kurds in Syria and Kurds in Turkey. And it did so by politicizing the Kurdish identity in Syria.  This all laid the groundwork for the deep discontent that would begin to simmer after Hafez Al-Assad resolved the water dispute, in return for giving up Ocalan – a decision that would end up with the arrest of the PKK leader, and solitary confinement in Imrali Prison. An unforgivable sin for those who considered themselves followers of Ocalan.

In a Human Rights Watch report, released in 2009 (two years before the Syrian uprising”), interviews with 30 Kurdish activists affiliated with the PYD highlighted not only the discontent that Kurdish activists have had with the Assad Government, but the consequences they faced for advocating for Kurdish rights.

“12 said that security forces tortured them,” the report said, “the most common torture method is beating and kicking on all parts of the body, especially beating on the soles of the feet” the report said.

All of this is to mention that any tactical agreement that has been made with the Syrian Government happened out of circumstances of war, and not, like some of the PYD’s critics seem to insist, due to a secret affinity that the PYD has with the Syrian Government.

So are Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian Government allies now?

As of recent, never have relations been worst between the two forces. The agreement for the Syrian Government to enter Afrin and aid in the resistance against the Turkish assault is purely tactical.

In September 2017, representatives in the Assad government began to raise more explicit denunciations against the gains made by Syrian Democratic forces. On the first of September, Assad exclaimed in a speech that territorial claims in Syria were “not up to debate or discussion ever!”, and to underscore his point, he insisted that “the national identity of Syria exists but its essence is Arabism.” Two weeks later, on the 16^th of September, Assad aide Bouthaina Shaaban told al Manar TV that the long-term interests of the Syrian Government were to establish control over territory held by Syrian Kurds.

“Whether it’s the Syrian Democratic Forces, or Daesh, or any illegitimate foreign force in the country .. we will fight and work against them so our land is freed completely from any aggressor,” she said.

“I’m not saying this will happen tomorrow .. but this is the strategic intent” she concluded.

In December 2017, Assad summed up the Damascus position to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Olgeovich Rogozin.

“Any who collaborate with a foreign power to fight the Syrian Army are traitors,” Assad said referring to the Kurds of Northern Syria, “It’s as simple as that”.

The PYD, similarly, has also insisted that it would defend its territory from Assad if forced to. In Sheikh Maqsoud, an area governed by Syrian Kurds in Aleppo, Souad Hassan, a senior Kurdish politician said that Al-Assad’s forces would never enter their city.

“We won’t give up Sheikh Maqsoud unless they kill us all” she was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Ilham Ahmad, former co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council, also told Arab tribes in Raqqa that the Syrian government would not be allowed to return to Raqqa either.

“The Syrian regime now has its own efforts and sends letters to our brothers in these areas. They say that they are coming back,” Ahmed told the tribal leaders, “On the contrary, the regime used tanks and planes against our people, bombed their homes and destroyed what they owned. We tell them that you are not fit to return and control our areas”.

Similar statements have also been made about Deir Ez-Zor and Tabqa

Once again, geographically isolated with no material and moral support, Afrin was compelled to cut this deal with the Assad Government.

So what’s next? 

What is next is the most important question. If Assad aide Bouthaina Shaaban was telling the truth, and she often does, then the strategic intent of the Assad Government is to retake land from the Syrian Democratic Forces and the YPG.

If that is the case, then what is next could very well be another front in an already complex war, if not a negotiation on unequal terms.

Either way, the future for Afrin is bleak. Had Afrin not been abandoned in the first place, this would have never happened.

To NATO countries, Turkey comes first. To the United States, with IS mostly being defeated, the Kurds are of no use anymore. To Russia, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the YPG ought to be abandoned insofar as they have strong relations with the United States. To the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition, the Kurds are an object of envy and contempt.

Afrin was forced into this predicament because it is alone.

Only negotiations between Kurdish officials and Damascus will prevent this tragedy to get unthinkably worst.