Has Syria's Arab-Kurdish rivalry reached a breaking point?
The establishment of a safe zone on the Turkish-Syrian border is likely to further deepen the divide between the Arabs and Kurds in the area.
The Syrian Kurds, one of the most effective fighting forces against the Islamic State (IS), established the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room (Burkan al-Furat) with various small Arab factions in September 2014, in spite of distrust between the ethnic groups. Now, the establishment of a new buffer zone in Syria extending from the town of Aazaz to Jarablus might add greater pressure on already tense relations between the Kurdish and Arab factions.
On July 27, US and Turkish officials announced a deal to fight IS by allowing the creation of an IS-free zone in Syria and allowing US planes to use the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. On Aug. 12, US warplanes carried out their first airstrikes on IS targets in Syria after taking off from Turkish soil, in a new phase in the anti-IS campaign.
The safe zone would be about 100 kilometers (62 miles) long and 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide, and it is assumed that full protection will be guaranteed in these areas from any possible attack by the Syrian regime or IS. The United States has nonetheless insisted the plan’s main goal was to clear out IS militants from the border region.
While the safe zone has been primarily created to prevent IS’ hold on these territories, Turkey’s ulterior motivations seem to lie elsewhere, with recent attacks targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — which Turkey considers as a terrorist organization directly connected to Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
