Ankara looks beyond Raqqa offensive for fate of northern Syria
The Turkish government is worried about how the Democratic Union Party will transform northern Syria once the Islamic State is defeated in Raqqa.
Prior to the May 16 meeting between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, Turkey had sought for a year to pressure Washington to make a final decision on whether it would cooperate with Turkey in northern Syria or whether it would opt to ally with the People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Of course, Turkey had hoped the United States would prefer to cooperate with its NATO ally rather than the YPG — a sub-state actor and the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The United States, however, adamantly maintained over the past year that it did not have to make such a choice, and Ankara could not devise a new road map that would persuade the United States to ally with Turkey east of the Euphrates. Now, the United States feels it can preserve its relations with the YPG — even elevating such relations with the upcoming Raqqa offensive — while keeping Ankara at bay. This may not be as easy as Washington seems to think.
Last week, I had a series of meetings in Ankara with government and security officials on behalf of Al-Monitor, and I was able to gather the following impressions. Both the government and the security bureaucracy in Ankara see the Islamic State (IS) as an internal and border security issue, yet they consider the PYD a political structure that could rapidly transform into a state. They see its military wing, the YPG, to be on the verge of becoming a standing army with conventional capabilities, thus making it an existential and imminent security threat to Turkey. In short, when it comes to northern Syria, Ankara is preoccupied with the YPG threat, not the IS threat.
This may explain the statement issued by the National Security Council following their May 31 meeting: “The meeting emphasized that the policy of support of the US for PKK/PYD/YPG terror organizations that operate under the guise of Syrian Democratic Forces in contravention of Turkey’s expectations is not compatible with friendship and being allies.”
