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Will Erdoğan crush the Syrian Kurds? Turkey has always feared their revolution

Out of the frying pan? Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images.

Out of the frying pan? Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images.


December 11, 2024   5 mins

Syria’s two million Kurds have every reason to loathe Bashar al-Assad. His Baathist regime long repressed their identity, and there are many Kurdish activists among the countless people emerging, dazed and stumbling, from the dictatorship’s dungeons. But even as Kurds danced and toppled statues, the shadow of further violence cast a pall across the celebrations, especially now their bête noire Turkey is emerging as the dominant foreign power in a new Syria.

With Russian forces withdrawing in disarray, Washington wrong-footed, and Tehran neutered by Israel, Erdoğan appears the main winner from the extraordinary developments in Syria. Turkey’s own objectives in Syria are clear enough: liquidating the Kurdish presence on its border by establishing a 20-mile deep corridor of Turkish influence. In fact, it was reportedly Assad’s refusal to capitulate to this proposed violation of Syrian sovereignty which led Ankara to give an implicit green light to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military operation. Aleppo, the first city to fall to HTS’s blitzkrieg advance, was a former jewel in the Ottoman Empire’s crown. After its capture, the Turkish flag flew from the Aleppo citadel once more.

Under Assad, the Kurds were written out of state politics — literally. Hundreds of thousands were denied Syrian identity papers, following a Sixties policy intended to “Arabise” the country’s north. In practice, that involved displacing the Kurds, described by an official as a “malignant tumour” in the body of the nation. Over more recent decades, Assad tolerated a militant Kurdish presence within Syria’s borders. The idea was to provoke nearby Turkey, a Nato member and key Western ally. Yet as the relationship between Damascus and Ankara warmed after the Cold War, that arrangement came to an end, and local Kurdish leaders were jailed or expelled. Many locals bear the scars of torture from those dark years, particularly after Assad’s security forces violently repressed a Kurdish uprising in 2005.

The revolutionary Kurdish political movement has moved away from its Marxist-Leninist roots, instead advancing a unique model based on women’s autonomy, minority representation, and a nominally devolved system of municipal governance. That’s even as it retains a strict Leninist political culture, an ideological paradox which nonetheless allowed the Kurds to react swiftly following the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Soon enough, they declared autonomy in Rojava, as Syrian Kurds refer to their homeland. During the brutal fight that followed, the Syrian Arab Republic spilled oceans of blood to keep Arab-majority cities in its grasp. That it quickly withdrew its forces from Kurdish areas, surrendering control to a ragtag militia, shows how little it cared about its nominally Kurdish citizens.

Beyond the Baath Party’s Arabist sentiments encouraging a dismissive view of Kurds, Assad likely felt able to ignore his country’s Kurds for other reasons. When compared with the Kurdish homelands in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, the arid badlands of Syrian Kurdistan were long dismissed as poor and undynamic. Yet the Kurds, bolstered by returning militants, battle-hardened during a dogged guerrilla war against Turkey, proved the only local force capable of defeating Islamic State. Along the way, they saved the Yazidis from genocide, and forged unexpected tactical partnerships with both Americans and local Arabs. As they drove Isis out of its former strongholds, including its erstwhile capital Raqqa, the Kurds helped forge a fragile multi-ethnic alliance alongside Arab Muslims, Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities. Known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), this alliance has since faced existential threats. That includes a deadly Islamic State insurgency; sporadic battles against Assad; and successive military occupations launched by Turkey — with Ankara bitterly opposed to the project in Kurdish-led autonomy on its southern border.

“The Kurds helped forge a fragile multi-ethnic alliance alongside Arab Muslims, Yazidis, Christians and other minorities.”

Throughout this fraught process, constructing a quasi-state while espousing a determinedly anti-statist ideology, the Kurdish movement demonstrated a protean diplomatic adaptability, finding various accommodations with Assad, Islamist and secular opposition forces, the US and Russia. With Russian and Iranian troops stationed in western Kurdish regions, and the US, UK and France to the east, the Syrian Kurds were able to exploit tensions between the two blocs, and make themselves indispensable to both. Kurdish forces even mediated when US and Russian patrols clashed while establishing their respective zones of influence in 2019-2020: a striking illustration of their ability to profit from the chaos of great-power conflict.

This pragmatic spirit enabled the Kurds not merely to seek reconciliation with Arab tribal federations, which had formerly thrown their weight behind Isis, but also maintain a tense if functional détente with Assad and his Russian backers. The Syrian army, for its part, was generally confined to small administrative centres and garrisons in Rojava’s cities. This tension was made tangible in the complex, interlocking geography of Qamishli, where the Assad regime controlled some streets and the Kurdish movement others. Anarchist international volunteers would regularly pass Syrian regime soldiers in the street, each studiously ignoring the other.

But with Assad ignominiously dispatched to Moscow, the calculus has changed. After helping the West defeat Isis, to the tune of 10,000 dead Kurdish fighters, Syrian Kurdish representatives want to pay a key part in rebuilding Syria. Their involvement in Syria’s government would benefit Western strategic interests, securing an anti-Iranian axis while creating a counterweight against Islamist rule.

In practice, however, the situation seems grim: and Turkey is to blame. Up to 100,000 Kurds have already been displaced in the latest round of fighting. Yet that’s not the fault of HTS, whose campaign has been marked by relative restraint toward local minorities, but rather Ankara-backed militias taking advantage of the chaos to attack internally displaced Kurds and Yazidis. “The situation remains critical,” says Mohammed Sheikho, a local council leader who weathered attacks by Turkey’s jihadist proxies to lead thousands of people to safety in regions still under DAANES control. “Many thousands of [displaced people] remain outside. Houses are not to be found. We lack blankets, ways to keep warm, heaters, bread, food. Many other people were detained [by Turkish-backed forces], and their fate is unknown until now.”

Even worse, Turkish proxies, united under the banner of the Syrian National Army (SNA), are now staging a fresh assault on the DAANES heartland. To paraphrase Voltaire, these militias are neither Syrian, nor national, nor an army. Rather, they’re funded and armed by Turkey; dedicated to executing Turkish aims against the Kurds; and encompass a muddled collection of mostly jihadist militias, including some sanctioned by the US for war crimes.

Meanwhile, Turkish air power continues to pound the US’s Kurdish partners across the north-east. A Turkish drone strike has just killed 12 civilians, including six children, in the town of Ain Issa (despite Turkey’s posturing as a friend of the anti-Assad revolution, no drone strikes targeted Assad’s forces as they capitulated to HTS).

The situation appears grave. Yet that same spirit of pragmatic cooperation, which has ultimately enabled the Kurdish movement to survive 13 years across one of the 21st century’s deadliest conflicts, could yet pave the way for an unexpected outcome. HTS and the DAANES are reportedly engaged in negotiations, with HTS so far seeming relatively restrained. But other forces are set to profit more directly from HTS’s rise to power. As Yusuf Can of the Wilson Center explains, though the DAANES could capitalise on their “relatively established” institutions, Turkey is “cautiously jubilant” at the prospect of using HTS to gain leverage with everyone from Trump to Iran.

What of the future? Will Turkey follow through on its threats of a cross-border operation to crush the Syrian Kurds for good? Or, given HTS’s unexpectedly conciliatory rhetoric towards minorities, perhaps there could be space for a multi-ethnic federation. If Turkey can, finally, be encouraged to end the communal bloodletting, a negotiated settlement encompassing all of Syria’s diverse populations could yet emerge. But despite these efforts, further bloodshed seems inevitable, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House unlikely to pour oil on troubled waters.

At the time of writing, Turkey’s proxy militias are advancing on Kobanî, the Syrian Kurdish city where the Kurds first turned the tide against Isis in 2014, launching their partnership with the US and UK. But 10 years on, with bands of Turkish-armed Islamists once again appearing over the horizon and swearing vengeance on the Kurds, their nominal Western allies are nowhere to be seen.


Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Rojava Information Center, the leading independent English-language news source in north and east Syria.

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Sayantani G
Sayantani G
7 days ago

Erdogan is a Pan Islamist who operates under a veneer of pragmatism. His espousal of hardline Salafist Islam is being ignored by the West but is bound to create further tensions in Central, West and South Asia.
He is much more dangerous than any other tinpot dictators.

William Amos
William Amos
7 days ago
Reply to  Sayantani G

I see the Imam of the Great Mosque in Constantinople has resumed giving the sermon leaning on a drawn scimitar.
I make it a rule of taking such gestures and their backers at face value these days.
https://medium.com/exploring-history/hagia-sophia-opening-spawns-new-era-turkey-99fd01b28798

Sayantani G
Sayantani G
7 days ago
Reply to  William Amos

Yet the Western leadership turns a blind eye….

Mrs R
Mrs R
7 days ago

Excellent article thank you. I fear that the answer to the question posed in the headline is “yes”.
Extraordinarily worrying given not only relatively recent events but also the history of brutal genocides perpetrated in that region by the Ottomans in the early 20th century.

Last edited 7 days ago by Mrs R
Chris Ioannou
Chris Ioannou
7 days ago

Turkey’s actions in this articles seem to be framed as anti-insurgency, and illegitimate only in their methods and violence. The heart of the matter is the National PACT, an explicitly expansionist and revanchist program which leaders of all stripea publicly support with shameless maps of Greater Turkey.

Chris Van Schoor
Chris Van Schoor
7 days ago

I would love to know more about the Kurds. This article hasn’t been very informative. Are they just communists, or in what way have they “moved on” from that? I don’t know. I suspect however that they aren’t Muslims, and hence the hatred? Which, if true, is not good news for the Syrian Christians either..

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
7 days ago

The Kurds are an ethnic group with their own language and culture, they are not Arabs. They are one of the largest minorities in the world without their own country, there is about 40 million of them including about 15 million in Turkey, 8 million in Iran, 6 million in Iraq, under 2 million in Syria. They are a minority in all these countries, often oppressed and treated as 2nd class citizens. The Turks repress them like they did in the past with ethnic minorities such as the Armenians. They are Sunni moslems , but have no history of being radicalized. They are in a terrible place.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 days ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

I would add that women have equal rights with men, just like them (they are brave warriors), not required to wear hijab
and this is very atypical and worthy of respect, given that they are Muslims.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 days ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

Good post but Just one point … some Kurds are Shia but I’m not sure of the overall percentage.

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
7 days ago

The plight of the Kurds, it should not be forgotten, was the trigger – or pretext – for the US invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein. Beware intervention.

Mrs R
Mrs R
6 days ago

It might have been a pretext but their plight was very real nonetheless.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
6 days ago

WMD’s were the pretext, not the Kurds, and W was obsessed with Saddam since he survived the Gulf War under Bush father, when they believed his regime would be overthrow, but it didn’t happen. The Kurds were a sideshow in this.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
7 days ago

for months I heard that Erdogan’s interest was Gaza and potentially going to the aid of fellow Muslims because Turks were so enraged by what is happening. Then we learn that Turkey has been supplying Israel with oil and otherwise behaving more as an ally than opponent. Politics is an interesting business.

Last edited 7 days ago by Alex Lekas
D Walsh
D Walsh
8 days ago

Turkey is a key member of NATO, they can do what they want

Israel controls the US, they can attack and invade any country they like

Thats the way the rules based order works

Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
7 days ago
Reply to  D Walsh

And yet – the UN apparatchiks were quick to condemn Israel’s destruction of the Syrian army’s strategic arms stockpiles, including chemical weapons (!), and the IDF’s limited incursion in the uninhabited Golan buffer zone after it had been deserted by the Syrian army and after the IDF had had to rescue an UNDOF base that had been overrun by jihadist militants (!!). But not a word about Turkey’s large scale invasion and bombing of civilians in Rojava …

Mrs R
Mrs R
7 days ago
Reply to  Danny Kaye

Two tier UN.

D Walsh
D Walsh
7 days ago
Reply to  Danny Kaye

Let me know when the US and EU impose sanctions on Isreal or Turkey

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
7 days ago
Reply to  D Walsh

Why would they impose sanctions on Israel? The only country in the region where any of us would live, by the way.

D Walsh
D Walsh
7 days ago
Reply to  Gorka Sillero

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and has invaded another country, and its a rogue state with WMDs

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
7 days ago
Reply to  D Walsh

I’m inclined to think you don’t understand the meaning of certain words, such as “genocide” , “invasion”.

That doesn’t excuse you, though lack of basic comprehension is common enough.

D Walsh
D Walsh
7 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

There are none so blind as those who will not see

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
7 days ago
Reply to  D Walsh

There are none so stupid as who only see what the msm shoves at them.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
3 days ago
Reply to  D Walsh

You makee the big joke, yes?