As Kurds gain in Syria, Turkey ponders military action
June 29, 2015
ANKARA, Turkey — As Kurdish rebels in northern Syria rack up wins against the Islamic State group, Turkish media is abuzz with talk of a long-debated military intervention to push the Islamic militants back from the Turkish border — a move that will also outflank any Kurdish attempts to create a state along Turkey's southern frontier.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to chair a National Security Council meeting Monday, only days after he vowed to prevent the Kurds from establishing a state in Syria.
Pro-government newspapers are rife with purported proposals, ranging from loosening the rules of engagement to give Turkish troops a freer hand to fire into Syria, to a tanks-and-troops invasion aimed at occupying a 110-kilometer (70-mile) long, 33-kilometer (20-mile) wide buffer zone.
The burst of tough talk has analysts "scratching their heads about what to make of all of this," Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank, said in a Twitter message.
In a telephone interview, Stein said the new talk of action was due in part to dramatic Kurdish gains in Syria, where rebels have scored a series of victories against the Islamic State group, most notably in the border town of Tal Abyad. That key transit point is not far from the IS's Syrian power base of Raqqa.
The capture of Tal Abyad opened ways for Kurds to connect their stronghold in Syria's northeast to the once-badly isolated border town of Kobani — which famously resisted a months-long Islamic State group siege — and perhaps even the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria's northwest. That would create a vast, contiguous zone of Kurdish control, which Turkey fears will stir up separatist sentiment among its own Kurdish minority.
Ankara is also eager to shake accusations that it is turning a blind eye to the Islamic State group — especially after photos were published showing the grinning fanatics within a stone's throw of the Turkish border during the battle for Tal Abyad.
Stein said the pictures were embarrassing.
"You had ISIS fighters walking within 10 feet (3 meters) of the border, smiling and waving at Turkish border guards," he said, using an acronym for the militants. "That gives the impression of complicity. It's very damaging to Ankara."
But the idea of military intervention across the border remains unpopular in Turkey. Any fighting in urban areas would almost certainly mean heavy casualties. And even a more limited intervention, such as artillery or air strikes, could send even more Syrians fleeing toward Turkey, which is already burdened with the world's largest number of refugees.
Fighting in Syria could also weaken the standing of Turkey's Justice and Development Party, which recently lost its parliamentary majority and is now courting potential coalition partners to stay in power.
Most seriously, any fighting in Kurdish areas of Syria risks derailing the peace process with Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, overturning a key achievement of Erdogan's leadership and potentially spreading violence across the country.
"If there is a decision to attack the cantons in Rojova (the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria), it would amount to an attack on all Kurdish people," senior Kurdish rebel commander Murat Karayilan said in a statement Monday. "Such an intervention would be an intervention that takes Turkey to civil war."
More modest forms of intervention in Syria seem likelier. Turkey has long pressed the U.S. to set up a no-fly zone — to no avail — and previous plans for a buffer zone have been shelved. Stein believes Monday's meeting will probably result in orders to Turkey's border forces to take their gloves off.
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