Is Manbij the latest Kurdish poke in Erdogan's eye?
Erdogan's plan to contain Kurds suffers a setback as Manbij on Syria's northern border with Turkey declares itself a self-governed canton.
MANBIJ, Syria — As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was declaring in February that after taking over al-Bab, Turkey would proceed to Manbij and then to Raqqa, Al-Monitor was meeting in Manbij with Adnan Abu Amjad, general commander of the Manbij Military Council.
The day of the meeting, the largely Kurdish, US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition west of Manbij was under heavy shelling by the Turkish army and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups Turkey supports. The United States was not responding to the attacks. When asked about the lack of reaction from the United States and the international coalition to the Turkish attacks, Abu Amjad said, “Our forces liberated seven villages from [the Islamic State (IS)] at al-Bab. The coalition wants us to withdraw to the town limits of Manbij because they say their agreement with Turkey covers only the town. But we don’t want to withdraw because the stability of Manbij depends on these villages.”
On March 2, the SDF handed over these villages to the Syrian regime’s border guards, who are under Russian control. This move prevented a possible clash with the Turkish army and allowed the people of Manbij to feel somewhat safer. Now, Manbij's boundaries are defended by two major global powers.
Turkey projected its progress in Syria based on US-Russian discord. But US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and Russian Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov met March 7 with their Turkish counterpart in Antalya and pointed out how erroneous Ankara’s calculations were. There is now a "Manbij thesis" in Syria that is based on “self-government and decentralization.” The Syrian constitutional draft submitted by Russia in Astana, Kazakhstan, seems to be based on the same, and so does the US approach.
