In the seemingly endless, churning, multi-sided meat grinder that is the war in Syria, Turkey is ready to do whatever it takes to secure its interests in the embattled country.
It is currently waging its third major military campaign aimed at bringing down the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and, perhaps more importantly, suppressing the ever-growing, de facto independent Kurdish enclave on Turkey’s border.
For the Kurds, this is yet another step toward their long-held dream of statehood. But for Turkey, which also hosts a large Kurdish minority, this is a strategic threat.
The Turkish leadership takes a hardline approach to the Kurdish issue in Syria, which it deems a source of terrorism.
According to Egemen Bagis, a senior Turkish diplomat and long-time political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey will do whatever it takes to deter Kurdish and Syrian Army forces in the region.
“We have a saying in Turkish,” the diplomat said in a May 27 interview with the Kyiv Post.
“If your neighbor’s house is on fire and you don’t help to put it out, that fire will eventually burn your own home.”
Egemen Bagis, the Ambassador of Turkey to the Czech Republic. (AFP)
Terrorist threat?
The armed struggle for Kurdish independence across ethnic Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq dates back decades.
Some of the major Kurdish armed political organizations, such as the left-wing Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have used terrorist methods to achieve their goals. The PKK is designated a terror group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.
To this day, the PKK has continued to wage guerilla war against Ankara in Turkey’s southeast, which is populated, according to various estimates, by up to 15 million Kurds.
In recent decades, the Kurds managed to obtain official broad autonomy in northern Iraq, which has a population of over 5 million people and has persistently sought full independence from Baghdad.
During the decade-long war in Syria, Kurdish forces took a wide swath of the country’s northeast under their control after playing a major role in defeating the Islamic State.
Turkey could not be less happy with this state of affairs. It considers two major Kurdish formations in Syria — the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and the People Protection Units (YPG) to be aggressive terror groups affiliated with the PKK.
Among Turkey’s foremost goals in northern Syria is “to destroy or pacify” the alleged Kurdish terrorism, according to the Turkish diplomat.
“Turkey has nothing against Kurds or Kurdish enclaves,” said Bagis, who currently serves as the ambassador to the Czech Republic.
“But Turkey is against terrorist elements. We don’t believe that all Kurds are terrorists, a lot of them are peace-loving, productive, hard-working, nice people. But among them, there are, unfortunately, the elements of PKK, YPG, and PYD that we’re against.
“And what we have a problem with is convincing some of our allies and partners, even in NATO, to see that these terrorists are affiliated with the leadership of PKK.”
To Ankara’s dismay, the international coalition led by the United States broadly supported the Kurdish forces in Syria for years, until U.S. President Donald J. Trump effectively scrapped multi-million-dollar military assistance to them in late 2019.
Trump’s decision was fiercely criticized as abandoning a key U.S. democratic ally in the fight against the Islamic State.
Despite its military involvement in the war, Turkey fully endorses the territorial integrity of Syria in its pre-war borders, Bagis said.
“But we also have the responsibility to protect our citizens from harm’s way,” he added.
“Unfortunately, terrorist organizations such as PKK and YPG and PYD have taken advantage of the lack of authority in different parts of Iraq and Syria. And they have found themselves safe havens where they gather together and organize attacks on Turkish soil. They kill our citizens, our soldiers, our civilians.”
According to Turkish authorities, Kurdish formations have killed nearly 1,000 Turkish security personnel and over 370 civilians in the newest escalation of fighting since 2015.
He reiterated that Turkey would continue doing “whatever it takes to protect its citizens and national interests” in neighboring Syria.
A Syrian woman washes a child outside a tent at a camp for displaced person near the village of Killi in Syria’s Idlib province on May 22, 2020. (AFP)
Illegitimate dictator
Beyond fighting alleged Kurdish terrorists, Ankara seeks stabilization in Syria, which it perceives as its “backyard.”
The Assad regime in Damascus has failed to ensure stability and combat terrorism in its country, which precipitated the Turkish intervention, Bagis said.
Official Ankara considers Assad an illegitimate ruler who has no support among the general population of his war-torn country.
“We are facing a dictator who has blood on his hands,” he said.
“We’re talking of Assad who has bombed his own cities and killed his own innocent citizens. And due to his oppressive regime, he is responsible for this mess, the migration (of displaced refugees from Syria abroad).”
“We want to see stability in Syria,” Bagis continued.
“Unfortunately, the Assad regime has not established stability. He probably has authority or control over 30 percent of his country… And that’s because he has lost the path with his own people.”
Bagis noted that Turkey would have acknowledged the Damascus regime had it won in fair democratic elections — but Syria doesn’t want Assad anymore.
Instead, Ankara continues to recognize the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the loose union of armed opposition groups, as the legitimate representative of the Syrian population, the ambassador said.
Turkey does not consider the FSA “a rebel force,” Bagis added.
Safety zones
Another key goal of Turkey’s military campaign is to resolve the everlasting issue of the mass exodus of refugees from Syria, Bagis told the Kyiv Post.
According to United Nations figures, 5.6 million people have left the ruined country since 2011 and more 6.6 million live miserably as displaced persons inside the country.
Roughly 3.5 million Syrians are scraping by Turkey, the world’s largest recipient of refugees, mostly in giant camps near the border.
“The world has unfortunately not been active enough to help these people,” Bagis said.
“They are not trying to go to Europe. They try to settle in Turkey. But their place is their own country. So we should help them establish an understanding of where they get back to. And for that, Syria needs and deserves a democracy where the rule of the people should govern.”
Ankara, therefore, supports the creation of “safety zones” in northern Syria, roughly 25–50 kilometers south to the Turkish border — “where we can clean the area from terrorist elements and build homes, schools, agriculture facilities, and slowly move these migrants back to their country, in a safe area protected…from attacks of terrorist entities and also of the bloody regime,” Bagis said.
Should such safe havens be created, Syrians refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and other countries could return and elect their own administrations and initiate the reconstruction of the country.
“It looks like a very big project,” Bagis said. “But it is much more feasible than sending millions of people to different European countries.”
Should the plan succeed, “that stability is going to be contagious, and it will lead into other parts of Syria as it gets along,” he added. “If people see success, it is going to attract more support.”
A Turkish military vehicle drives on M4 highway, which links the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Latakia, near the village of al-Nayrab, about 14 kilometres southeast of the city of Idlib and seven kilometres west of Saraqib in northwestern Syria on March 21, 2020. (AFP)
Status quo in Idlib
In general, Ankara seeks to prevent anything that could cause a new wave of refugees exiting the country, which would inevitably affect Turkey.
The Turkish government is particularly focused on the last rebel-held enclave of Idlib, where at least 3 million impoverished civilians live under siege by Russian-backed Syrian regime forces. The Turkish contingent in northern Syria opposes the regime’s attempts to retake the stronghold, which would likely trigger a new mass exodus of refugees.
During the latest regime offensive in Idlib in late 2019–2020, between 500,000 and 1 million civilians were reported to have rushed toward the Turkish border, trying to escape the carnage.
The latest outbreak of hostilities led to direct armed clashes between the Syrian Army and the Turkish forces — and resulted in yet another fragile ceasefire declared in early March.
To this day, Turkish forces, in compliance with a deal with the Kremlin, continue with their patrol missions along the strategic highway M4 in liaison with Russian military police.
Bagis said Ankara believes the new status quo in Idlib is a mere improvement of the security situation.
Asked if Turkish forces would be ready to engage the Syrian Army in case of yet another offensive in Idlib, the ambassador said Turkey would offer an appropriate response to any “unilateral action by any single country.” (Editor’s Note: Following the publication of the interview, Ambassador Bagis asked the Kyiv Post to specify that he meant responding to any unilateral actions by the al-Assad forces.)
“History has shown that Turks do not mind fighting…” he said. “We will do whatever it takes to protect our national interests and the well-being of our citizens.”
