Turkey committed itself to conducting operations against Islamic State following a suicide bombing in the town of Suruç in July. However, as Bill Park writes, the country has faced criticism over its decision to link operations to attacks carried out against Kurdish forces. He notes that the complex nature of Turkey’s involvement in the conflict has indirectly allied the United States with jihadi groups and helped facilitate the Turkish government’s attempts to undermine Kurdish organisations in Turkey and Syria

Park, Bill

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/09/03/a-web-of-unholy-alliances-how-the-us-has-indirectly-aided-ankaras-attempts-to-undermine-the-kurds-in-syria-and-turkey/A web of unholy alliances: How the US has indirectly aidedAnkara’s attempts to undermine the Kurds in Syria and TurkeyTurkey committed itself to conducting operations against Islamic State following a suicide bombing inthe town of Suruç in July. However, as Bill Park writes, the country has faced criticism over itsdecision to link operations to attacks carried out against Kurdish forces. He notes that the complexnature of Turkey’s involvement in the conflict has indirectly allied the United States with jihadi groupsand helped facilitate the Turkish government’s attempts to undermine Kurdish organisations in Turkeyand Syria.In the wake of the alleged Islamic State (IS) suicide bombing in the Turkish border town of Suruç on20 July 2015 that killed thirty-three pro-Kurdish activists, Ankara finally committed itself to actively contribute to theUS-led fight against IS in Syria. In particular, it agreed to allow US bombers and armed drones to attack IS targetsfrom Turkey’s Incirlik airbase. The first such attack was launched on 12 August. Within days of the Suruç attackTurkish forces also retaliated against an IS base in Syria from where cross-border fire had killed a Turkish soldier.Furthermore, dozens of alleged IS activists were detained in police raids throughout Turkey, although many havesubsequently been released. Ankara had long resisted US pressure to join the fight against IS, and has been widelysuspected of at minimum turning a blind eye to IS activities at the Syria-Turkey border and inside Turkey, and perhapseven of colluding with the jihadist group. In September 2014 Turkey reportedly freed some detainees in return for therelease of forty nine Turkish citizens who had been taken captive by IS during its capture of Mosul, northern Iraq.Some have speculated about the existence of a tacit non-aggression pact between Ankara and IS.Turkey’s Kurdish activists, and those of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD, or Partiya Yakitiya Demokrat), havelong been convinced of Ankara’s support for IS, as have many Turkish opposition politicians, journalists, Damascusand Tehran, and many western diplomats and officials. In the immediate aftermath of the Suruç bombing, two Turkishpolicemen were murdered by the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane), with which the PYDis affiliated and which held the government responsible for the Suruç atrocity.In response, Ankara combined its crackdown against IS with a much fiercer onslaught against the PKK, which hasresulted in numerous bombing raids against PKK targets inside Turkey and across the border into Iraq, the detentionof hundreds of Kurdish activists and elected officials, the blocking of Kurdish websites, and calls for the withdrawal ofparliamentary immunity from MPs representing the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party  (HDP, or HalklarinDemokratik Partisi).Ankara’s belated alignment to the anti-IS coalition was coupled with an agreement with Washington that they wouldcooperate to establish a ‘safe zone’ along a roughly seventy mile stretch of the Turkey-Syrian border. Turkey has longpushed its allies to support the establishment of such a zone, and has been frustrated by their resistance to the idea.Western and especially US reluctance was explained by an unwillingness to put boots on the ground, a warinessabout engaging Syrian regime forces, a possible escalatory reaction by Tehran or Moscow, and a well-foundedsuspicion that Turkey preferred to focus on Assad’s overthrow rather than the defeat of IS and other jihadist groups.However, it remains unclear who is to provide the ground forces to secure the safe zone. Turkey will not countenancea PYD lead. Indeed, when PYD forces took the border town on Tal Abyad in June 2015, which enabled the Kurds tolink two of their three cantons in northern Syria and control the bulk of Syria’s border with Turkey, President Erdoğandeclared – not for the first time – that an autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria was unacceptable to Turkey.Member of the U.S. Air Force refuelling an aircraft at Incirlik Air Base, Credit:U.S. Department of Defense (CC-BY-SA-3.0)A build up of Turkish forces ensued. Yet the town hadbeen held by IS for over a year, a situation thatprompted not a peep from Ankara. Most of the firstdetachment of fifty four US-trained ‘moderates’ thatwere infiltrated into northern Syria in July werepromptly rounded up by the al Qaeda affiliated Jabhatal-Nusra – some believe as a result of a tip off byTurkish security forces. Turkey long resisted USpressure to proscribe al Nusra, and even since iteventually complied with Washington’s wishes in June2014 it has nevertheless been generally suspected ofsponsoring the group, along with Qatar and SaudiArabia.Evidently Washington is unwilling to be seen as alignedwith an outfit such as al Nusra, and has recentlylaunched air attacks against it. There are signs that inrecent days the group has lowered its profile in andaround the designated ‘safe zone’ north of Aleppo,ceding its positions to other jihadist groups such as the still more Ankara-favoured Ahrar al Sham. Although suchgroups have recently taken to positioning themselves against IS, possibly to facilitate Turkey’s negotiations withWashington, in fact their memberships and ideologies overlap with those of IS, and the relationships between themare fluid and frequently cooperative. The ‘safe zone’ might well emerge as an IS free zone, but the most likelycandidates for control of it are hardly less objectionable jihadi factions.From Ankara’s perspective, the chief advantages of such a jihadi, but non-IS, controlled zone along its southernborder are two-fold. One is that it will serve to prevent PYD control of the entire border with Syria, which wasthreatened by moves westwards by Kurdish forces aimed at connecting the third Kurdish canton, Afrin, with the othertwo. Turkey has been rattled by PYD advances in Syria, and by the fact that hitherto most US bombing raids havebeen in support of PYD battles against IS.Most observers seem to have concluded that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP, or Adelet veKalkinma Partisi) have connected Syrian Kurdish advances with the electoral success of the HDP in Turkey’s Juneelection. This resulted from Kurdish voters switching their allegiance from the AKP to the HDP, thereby returningeighty HDP MPs and denying the AKP an overall majority. The current onslaught against the PKK is widely interpretedas a high-risk attempt to discredit and compromise the HDP, push its vote below the ten per cent threshold, andthereby clear the way for an AKP parliamentary majority at the 1 November elections. This has for the time beingkilled what passed for the ‘peace process’ between the government and Turkey’s Kurds.The second virtue for Ankara of a jihadi controlled safe zone is that such groups can be relied upon to align withTurkey’s main objective of overthrowing the Damascus regime. They might even receive US air support in doing so.Even if Turkey’s determination to overthrow Assad is understood, its ideological overlap with Syria’s Islamists is onlyreluctantly conceded, and its reluctance to directly confront or escalate a fight with IS remains underestimated –although Ankara does now appear to better appreciate the threat posed to it by IS.The AKP government showed no inclination to concede Kurdish requirements of the ‘peace process’, most notablydevolution, nor did it seek to elevate the HDP as a serious negotiating partner as a means to marginalise the lesscompromising armed elements of the PKK. Ankara’s passivity at best in the face of the IS siege of Kobane, and to theIS presence on its border, were not aberrations. In its gratitude at belated and limited Turkish cooperation, Washingtonappears to have indirectly allied itself with jihadi groups, and to have facilitated a Kurdophobic Ankara’s attempts toundermine Syria’s and Turkey’s Kurds. This is sure to rebound sooner rather than later.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor ofthe London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1NcBzdc _________________________________About the authorBill Park – King’s College LondonBill Park is a Senior Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London.

A web of unholy alliances: how the US has indirectly aided Ankara’s attempts to undermine the Kurds in Syria and Turkey

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