QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The press releases of Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK), a body uniting the country’s political and military top brass, do not inspire much confidence in the country’s peaceful intents. Released in all-caps, the highlights of these meetings, convened every two months, tend to reserve their primary resolutions for the “cleansing of terrorist organizations” for the sake of “peace and security.” Such Orwellian statements are usually accompanied by veiled threats against neighboring Armenia and claims of Greek escalations.
The lines promising to fight “PKK/KCK-PYD/YPG terrorism on our southern border” tend to be formulaic. Yet, every so often, the MGK’s press releases reveal something about Turkey’s aims in Syria. A March 30, 2023, press release, for example, zeroed in on the use of helicopters by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) members. Much of its ire was reserved for the “actors collaborating with and protecting” these forces – namely, the Sulaymaniyah-based PUK government and the US armed forces. Another statement, following the Dec. 1, 2022, council meeting, unusually made reference to the UN Charter’s self-defense clause at a time when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was pressing for a ‘green light’ for a renewed offensive in northern Syria after a more-than-suspicious alleged SDF bomb attack in downtown Istanbul.
The most recent press release, on June 8, following the first MGK meeting of Erdogan’s reshuffled cabinet, makes ample reference to the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne, which established Turkey’s modern borders, on July 24. It also claims that “maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity and achieving lasting peace and stability can only be possible by clearing the country of terrorist organizations,” in what some observers have deemed a veiled threat against the government in Damascus. Finally, the statement provides the first open acknowledgement of the need for a “safe, voluntary return” of the around 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey as a national security concern.
Shortly after the MGK meeting, Turkey embarked in a large-scale assault against Autonomous Administration-controlled northeast Syria, leaving dozens dead. How does this limited campaign fit within Turkey’s wider aims in Syria?
Timeline of attacks
To the disappointment of many, Erdogan clenched victory anew on May 28, becoming Turkey’s President for a third term. By June 3, he had established a new cabinet. The presidential and parliamentary elections could not have gone much worse for Turkey’s and Syria’s Kurds: nearly one in four Turkish citizens voted for an extreme nationalist party; the pro-Kurdish HDP party raked in the worst result in recent memory.
Unsurprisingly, tensions flared up almost immediately. On June 5, PKK commander Yasar Ciya warned that “should the enemy insist on pursuing this war in 2023, we should turn all of Turkey into hell.” A unilateral ceasefire established by the armed group after the February 6 earthquake was set to run out on June 13. On June 9, a Kurdish-Turkish activist critical of the Ankara government was shot dead in Sulaymaniyah. Over the following weekend, PKK forces in Iraqi Kurdistan were bombed 85 times by Turkish forces, according to the group.
As the AANES announced its intention of trying foreign ISIS members on June 10, Turkish attacks on northeast Syria began as well. That day, a drone targeted a car in the Shahba area (Aleppo northern countryside where Afrin IDPs are residing in), killing and wounding several YPG fighters. Intense shelling and at least 13 drone strikes followed until June 14, killing 3 civilians and wounding 9, including a child. At least two wounded civilians had to have limbs amputated following a drone strike. The attacks also killed at least 11 SDF members, 8 Syrian army soldiers and 1 Russian soldier, as well as wounding 6 SDF service members, 9 Syrian army soldiers, and 4 Russian soldiers. Turkey’s Ministry of Defense puts the toll of military deaths at 53, though the SDF has denied this.
According to the Rojava Information Center (RIC), a local monitor, Turkey has conducted 30 drone attacks on northeast Syria so far this year, killing 42 people, including 10 civilians, and wounding 26, of which 7 were civilians.
The recent attacks were focused particularly on the Kurdish-held Shahba area, north of Aleppo, and Manbij, which is held by the AANES. Other targets included the outskirts of Kobani, the Qamishli-Tirbespiye road, and the Zirkan (Abu Rasin) front, north of Hasakah. Intermittent shelling continued until June 18. The Turkish forces also attacked PKK positions in Iraqi Kurdistan and established a 15-day military curfew on the Kurdish-majority Sirnak province in Turkey.
The Turkish trilemma
The Turkish attacks follow a familiar pattern. On Feb. 1, 2022, (three days after another MGK meeting), Turkey launched ‘Operation Winter Eagle’, a day-long air assault across 80 Kurdish targets in Syria and Iraq. In July 2022, days after Erdogan met his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Tehran (and a MGK meeting was held on the 21st), Turkey embarked on a month-long military escalation against northeast Syria, which included 21 drone strikes and near-daily shelling on multiple fronts. It left 62 people dead and 86 wounded, of which 14 and 61, respectively, were civilians. In November of that year, following the unlikely SDF Istanbul bombing, a Turkish air campaign systematically targeted northeast Syria’s vital oil and gas infrastructure in an operation dubbed ‘Claw-Sword’. The airstrikes killed 11 and wounded 9 civilians. It also left 3 of northeast Syria’s security forces dead, and killed 15 Syrian army soldiers, while wounding another 12.
To some extent, these air operations betray Erdogan’s impotence in getting either Russia or the US to agree to another land invasion of Kurdish-majority territory – an ongoing goal of the Turkish President. Last year, Russia was detrimental in halting such an assault.
Yet one would be foolish to see such campaigns merely as a weakness. For one, they are war waged on the cheap. Moreover, they are pursuing a number of Turkish foreign and domestic policy goals. “The recent Turkish escalation in northern Syria was a show of force before the upcoming four-way summit,” says Salih Muslim, Co-chair of the PYD, the largest Kurdish party in northeast Syria. The foreign ministers of Turkey, Syria, Russia and Iran will meet in Astana on June 21st. Turkey’s targeting of Syrian government soldiers as well as Russian soldiers is likely meant to increase the pressure on both sides. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has so far refused to sit down with his counterpart until Turkish troops withdraw from the country. The MGK’s June 8 resolution quoted above signals that Turkey is unlikely to do so before Syria deals with its Kurdish groups.
The choice of Shahba and Manbij as the main target for the latest campaign also “signals a particular interest in SDF positions west of the Euphrates at this time, coinciding with Erdogan’s June 2022 remarks in which he emphasized a new offensive on Tel Rifaat and Manbij,” according to RIC researcher Spencer Black. Shahba, in particular, has been turned into a “conflict arena” by the Astana group, TEV-DEM, northeast Syria’s civil society umbrella, said in a statement on June 18. Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and Kurdish forces are all present in the Shahba area, which is surrounded to the north, east and west by Turkish positions. Russian and government forces are present in Manbij, too.
What Ankara’s end goal in Syria is, however, is unclear. It presently faces a trilemma between getting rid of its Syrian refugees, which are deeply unpopular with the Turkish electorate; continuing to wage war on Syria’s Kurds by maintaining a presence in the country; and normalizing relations with Damascus by withdrawing its forces. The war against Kurdish autonomy has historically been Erdogan’s main preoccupation in Syria. Yet the pressure to expel Syrians has grown as of late; the president is more dependent than ever on Turkish nationalist parties to stay in power, all of which want them gone. Finally, there is the question of Turkey’s occupation of northern Syria, which is expensive, unpopular with Turkey’s armed forces, and chaotic.
Erdogan could further expand into the Kurdish border areas – with Russian consent – and create the necessary space to resettle its refugees. However, this would further involve Ankara in Syria and preclude any normalization with al-Assad. It could withdraw from Syria – or scale back its involvement by letting Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist group which controls Idlib, govern northern Syria on its behalf. That would hardly satisfy Damascus for long, and an implosion of opposition-held Syria will likely send more Syrians running to its borders. Similarly, were Turkey to leave Syria based on an agreement to turn their guns on the Kurdish-held northeast, the ensuing displacement wave would likely head north as well. This would also incite Kurdish groups elsewhere, like the PKK, to increase its attacks on Turkey, dragging Ankara back into conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
For now Ankara will try have it all – continuing to attack Syria’s Kurds, increasing refugee repatriations, and attempting to normalize with Damascus. Yet as al-Assad is increasingly welcomed in the Middle East’s capitals, the AANES attempts to reach a settlement with the central government, and the refugee issue in Turkey continues to take central stage, Erdogan is running out of time. His National Security Council faces some tough decisions.