Turkey aims to pulverise the Syrian Kurdish SDF/YPG

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Turkish troops having reached as far south as Aleppo, after working hand in hand with HTS to overthrow Bashar al-Assad (as he warned Iran after meeting the Iranian Foreign Minister in Damascus on December 2nd) [1], clearly plans to further pulverise the Kurdish forces in their native northern Syrian homeland. [2] Kurds call this Rojava, or West Kurdistan but the YPG leadership changed the name to the Autonomous Area of North East Syria (AANES) removing all reference to Kurdistan observing the dictates of the Kurdistan Committees (KCK) and their pro-Ocalan policies. The ceasefire negotiated between the SDF and the SNA Turkish proxy was abandoned by Ankara as soon as the American negotiators had departed.

Provoking the militant Turkish beast has not been in the interests of the Syrian Kurds but any peaceful approach to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic state has not lessened the brutality of Turkish and jhadist attacks nor any manner of diplomatic benefit.

Turkey’s Misak-i Millî neo-Ottoman goals envision reclaiming all its former territory inhabited by Kurds whether in Syria or Iraq. Additionally, Turkey exhibits no respect for international law and relies on American acquiescence and the velvet-tongued semantics of US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken to get its own way. For years it has played a double hand with NATO as I detailed in my paper, Turkey: NATO’s Islamic State Member.

Turkey has never agreed to withdraw from occupied northern Cyprus nor given back the swathe of Syrian territory lying on its southwest border at Hatay it annexed that is still shown as part of Syria on printed Syrian maps.

Turkey also publicly dismisses the US rhetoric of ISIS still posing a threat to Syria (or Iraq) that justifies the SDF being retained [3], along with the US presence. Instead, Turkey aims to supplant the Kurdish forces with the Turkish army and its Islamist proxies under the misnomer of the Syrian National Army (SNA) and bring a decisive – even if bloody – end to Kurdish autonomy.

The Syrian National Army has been a Sunni jihadist Turkish state asset from the outset of the Syrian civil war and continues to represent a belligerent destabilising force across the Middle East.

As with northern Iraq, the day the American forces abandon the Kurds – as Donald Trump so readily allowed during his past presidency – all gains will be lost. The collusion of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) with Turkey will not honour the junior partner once their usefulness is served.

“Kurdish Pigs”

As a Kurdish lawyer from Aleppo who narrowly escaped beheading by ISIS (when the Russians shelled the area), told me with a cynical little laugh, “these jihadists just refer to us as hinzir (pigs). We are just pigs to them”. I assumed he meant being fit for the slaughter as unclean beasts. Naturally, having come so close to the blade he insists he will not now be returning to the ‘new’ jihadist dominated Syria.

That Sharia governance must come into force sooner or later is evident from the fiefdom run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib and the numerous human rights abuses committed there as chronicled in various reports detailed by the UN General Assembly. [4]

State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, has announced an extension of the (broken) ceasefire between Turkey and the SDF but the pro-PKK Kurdish source Medya news delivered a very mixed message that the ceasefire was ‘raising hopes for dialogue but revealing ongoing risks of renewed aggression and a threat of Turkish occupation in Kobani (Kobane).” [5]

Which is greater, the threat or the hope?

Reuters had noted that the extension of the ceasefire was only until the end of the week. Turkish troops are amassed on the border. [6] Just two days before the Wall Street Journal had reported : “Senior U.S. officials say Turkey and its militia allies are building up forces along the border with Syria, raising alarm that Ankara is preparing for a large-scale incursion into territory held by American-backed Syrian Kurds.” 7

Officials are warning of an ‘imminent’ cross border operation. Turkey has nothing to lose with its allies now installed in Damascus. The Cradle reported “ Al Mayadeen’s correspondent stated that “Turkiye wants a security belt 30 kilometers wide on the border with Syria,” stressing that it “is close to achieving its goal.”…The Turkish military has built a concrete barrier between Kobani and the Turkiye border, while Turkish warplanes can be seen flying above the city.” [8]

That thirty kilometres belongs to the traditional Kurdish heartland. Labelling them ‘terrorists’ and prime targets for liquidation is a great convenience for Erdogan as part of his well established pattern.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2024 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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