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Disarming

At Tuesday’s panel “The Syrian Conflict and Regional Security,” hosted by the Turkish Heritage Organization, the complex web of military alliances and political tensions entwining Turkey, Iraq, the United States, and Kurdish forces against ISIS took center stage.

Turkey considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG)—the military wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)—a terrorist group. Yet the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, is arming the YPG in order to further the fight against ISIS.

To smooth tensions, the United States has promised to give Turkey lists of the weapons it has provided to the YPG, and to ensure that they are not used in Turkey. Moreover, added panelist Michael Doran, although the Trump administration is willing to work with the YPG in order to defeat ISIS in Syria, the president will not tolerate a PKK state in Syria. The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, is a left-wing organization based in Turkey and Iraq engaged in a long-term armed conflict with the Turkish state. It seeks to establish a state of Kurdistan.

Despite these assurances, tensions between the United States and Turkey persist over the Kurdish issue.

Central to the problem, explained General Mark Kimmitt, is the fact that in order to maintain cordial US-Turkey relations and prevent partisan US involvement in regional Kurdish politics, the YPG must eventually comply with a US policy of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR). Yet the United States has already armed and trained the Kurdish rebels. It is unclear how disarming the YPG would be accomplished. Turkey is wary of possible complications.

With ISIS’s expulsion from Raqqa finally on the horizon, the future of Syria hangs in the balance. No one, admitted Doran, appears to know the American plan. It is possible that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad will be allowed to govern, but this arrangement will not sit well with the United States for long if the Assad regime attracts Iranian presence in Syria. On the Kurdish question, “most Kurds don’t want the PKK forever,” observed Denise Natali of the National Defense University. However, it’s not clear how they will leave Iraq and northeastern Syria. The PKK helps local populations by providing badly needed electricity, jobs, and salaries.

Natali believes it is possible for Turkey to maintain relations with non-PKK affiliated Syrian Kurds in the northeastern part of the country. Syrian Kurds are not ultimately moved to militancy by ideological considerations. Rather, their concerns are material. They need salaries. The PYD has actually maintained a relationship with the Assad regime throughout the Syrian civil war. They continue to receive government paychecks. Natali anticipates that the Assad government will prevail and negotiate with vulnerable Kurdish rebel leaders. Even with the Kurds’ territorial expansion, Kurdistan is landlocked. This increases the incentive to negotiate.

Ultimately, observed Doran and Natali, neither Turkey nor the United States—nor any of the countries in the Levant and Middle East region—want to see Syria or Iraq fracture into smaller sectarian or ethnic states post-ISIS. Natali further believes that such fracturing is highly unlikely. In the meantime, as Turkey and the United States adopt distinct approaches to opposing ISIS, the two NATO allies will remain at odds over the decision to arm YPG forces.