Moments after averting one military clash, Turkey’s president was preparing for another one. A few minutes after Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin finished their critical meeting in Sochi last month, the Turkish government tweeted a message in Erdogan’s name revealing the agreement to create a de-militarized zone in Syria. The message made two further points: that the Kurdish PYD/YPG was “the main structure” threatening to destroy the territorial integrity of Syria, and that these “terror nests on the east of the Euphrates,” not the province of Idlib, were the biggest threat to the future of Syria.
Even as the world looks on at the unfolding crisis in Idlib, Turkey’s president has not forgotten the Syrian Kurds – and clearly intends to continue his attacks against them. For all the years of the Syrian conflict, Syria’s Kurdish community have been a great unknown, pulled in various directions between their Kurdish brethren across the border in northern Iraq, their fellow Syrian citizens and the larger Kurdish community across the Turkish border.
A year after their fellow Kurds in Iraq sabotaged their own quest for statehood, Syria’s Kurds are now facing a similarly pivotal moment, trying to balance their desire for autonomy with a need to rely on Damascus for protection from Turkey. Caught between the two, the Kurds of Syria are on the edge of a political precipice, aware that a misstep might set back their long-held dream of a separate Kurdish state.
For Syria’s Kurds this is a difficult moment, because Damascus is both weak and strong. Strong because, with only Idlib province and some isolated areas out of the control of the regime, the Assad government is closer than ever before to obliterating the rebels and ending the uprising. But weak because, drained after seven years of war, the regime is no match for the Turkish government, which is absolutely determined to stop any Kurdish presence along its border.
The PYD that Erdogan was referring to is the Kurdish Democratic Union political party that runs the northeast of Syria, protected by the United States, and their armed wing, the YPG. Turkey maintains that these Kurdish groups inside Syria are allying themselves with the PKK, a Kurdish militant group inside Turkey that most countries consider to be a terrorist group, and fears any Kurdish statelet on its border would in effect become a safe haven for them.
To turn away from Damascus would be to face the Turkish military alone; to turn toward the regime would be to risk returning under its control and forfeiting the gains of autonomy that the civil war has brought.
The elections that have just taken place offered the first glimpse of their inclinations. On Sunday 16, Syria held its first local elections since 2011, but the Kurdish-run north-east refused to allow the vote to take place. For the Kurds, to allow a vote for the regime would be to accept that Damascus is still in charge; they hope to push for a federation in which they would have greater autonomy.
But even as they indicate a desire to separate from Damascus, they are willing to put Kurdish bodies on the line to defend the regime. Quietly, Kurdish militants have joined regime forces in attacking Idlib province. Joining the regime in this way is enormously controversial within Syria and in the West.
In the West, it is perceived as the Kurds, having benefited from the protection, training and weapons of the United States in their northeastern strongholds, are now using those weapons to help the Syrian regime, which the US is opposed to.
For Syrians in the rebel areas it is seen as a betrayal, fellow Syrians joining forces with the very regime that has dispossessed and murdered them.
And yet the Kurdish community will have calculated that this is the best way to regain its strongholds.
Earlier this year, the Turkish military swept out Kurdish fighters from the strategically vital town of Afrin, located between Aleppo and the Syria-Turkish border. The community still hopes to return, trading support for the regime now in regaining Idlib with regime support later to retake Afrin. Kurdish leaders have openly spoken of this alliance. But whether the regime will honor that deal remains to be seen.
For now, the Kurds are too weak militarily to fight either the Turkish or Syrian states. Nor are they politically strong. There are internal tensions between various groupings in the Syrian Kurdish movement, and disagreements over how to work with Kurdish communities in Turkey and Iraq.
Above all else, they will be seeking to avoid the mistakes of the Iraqi Kurds last year, when, hoping to force Baghdad into further concessions, Iraq’s Kurds pushed too hard for a referendum. The response from Baghdad was devastating, which sent troops north to secure Kirkuk, a multiethnic, oil-rich city that Iraq’s Kurds would need in order to make their state viable. The Kurdish forces retreated from Kirkuk, leaving them weaker than they were before – indeed leaving them with less land than they controlled in 2003, after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
For Syria’s Kurds, the loss of Afrin earlier this year was similarly devastating, a moment when it seemed their plans for autonomy were collapsing. Joining the regime presents an opportunity to reverse that loss.
But behind all the alliances and strategies, behind all the calculations of how to balance the Syrian regime and the United States, lies one fundamental problem, running like a river through the political landscape: Syria’s Kurds desire a state that no one is yet inclined to offer them.
Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
AFP PHOTO/DELIL SOULEIMAN
