America’s relationship with Turkey has entered a period of deep crisis. At the heart of the matter is continued U.S. support for Syrian Kurds fighting the Islamic State. The partnership between the United States and a coalition of Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Arab militias, currently known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), began more than two years ago under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump’s administration continues to back the 50,000-strong SDF as the most capable anti-Islamic State force in northern Syria. The SDF are now closing in on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s self-described caliphate, and Trump has approved a plan to provide arms directly to the YPG for the final push. Yet Turkey sees the SDF as mortal enemies due to the YPG’s affiliation with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a designated terrorist organization which has fought a bloody insurgency inside Turkey for three decades. These clashing interests have put Washington and Ankara on a collision course just as the U.S.-led campaign to crush the caliphate enters its culminating phase.
Turkey’s concerns about the YPG are understandable and widely appreciated. What is less well known is the fact that it was Turkey’s own actions, in particular a set of decisions made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that stymied joint U.S.-Turkey efforts to identify an alternative anti-Islamic State force. This pushed the United States and the YPG closer together and eventually created the SDF. And, with Raqqa in their sights, the Trump administration is unlikely to abandon them now.
In the closing days of the Obama administration, President Barack Obama was willing to increase training and assistance to the SDF, including YPG elements, for the final push on the Islamic State’s capital. But retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, asked the administration to hold off so the new team could run its own review. (We now know that Flynn was paid to represent Turkish government interests prior to becoming national security advisor, although it is unclear whether that had any impact on the decision.)
After surveying the options, the Trump administration seems to have come to the same conclusion Obama did: the SDF represent the only viable force to seize Raqqa anytime soon. Nevertheless, the Trump administration decided to delay providing additional support to the SDF — especially armaments directly to the YPG — for months out of deference to the U.S.-Turkey alliance and Erdogan’s domestic politics. The hope appears to have been that waiting until after Turkey’s April 16 referendum on enhancing the power of the presidency would give Erdogan less incentive to whip up nationalist sentiment against the American plan. Following the narrow approval of the referendum consolidating Erdogan’s power, Trump even took the controversial step of calling Erdogan to congratulate him, most likely to make the bitter pill of the Raqqa operation easier to swallow. Erdogan was also invited to meet with Trump at the White House, a political boon to the Turkish president given rising international criticism over Turkey’s democratic backsliding.
It didn’t work. On April 25, Turkish warplanes struck YPG and PKK positions on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border. The bombing raid against a YPG command center on Mount Karachok in northeastern Syria — which occurred only a few miles from where U.S. troops were operating — killed 20 YPG fighters. Meanwhile, the Turkish strikes in northwestern Iraq, which targeted the PKK on Mount Sinjar, mistakenly killed several Kurdish Peshmerga troops instead. There was no formal coordination with the United States, and the U.S. military was given less than an hour’s notice prior to the Turkish operation. In the days since, U.S. forces have been patrolling the Syrian side of Turkey-Syria border, acting as de facto peacekeepers to deter the two side from going at each other’s throats.
Erdogan has warned that Turkey will continue to strike the YPG unless the United States abandons its partnership with them, even as Turkey has thrown its support behind a Russian proposal to create “de-escalation zones” to freeze the conflict elsewhere in Syria. One Erdogan advisor even hinted that U.S. forces could be struck if they continue to back the Syrian Kurds. If Turkey follows through with these threats, it could trigger a Turkey-Kurd border war that derails the Raqqa campaign, undermining a core national security interest of the United States. And, if a military mistake by Turkey results in the death of U.S. forces, it could bring Washington and Ankara — two NATO allies — into direct conflict.
When Erdogan travels to Washington next week, American support for the Syrian Kurds will be the top issue he raises with Trump. Erdogan is likely to urge Trump to cancel his decision to arm the YPG and look for other alternatives to take Raqqa — moves Trump is unlikely to take. Does that mean the two NATO allies are fated for an irreparable breach? No. But it does mean that, between now and then, the administration needs to develop a comprehensive plan to ease tensions, before it is too late. The campaign to defeat the Islamic State and the future of the U.S.-Turkey alliance hang in the balance.
Musa, a 25-year-old Kurdish marksman, stands atop a building as he looks at the destroyed Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on January 30, 2015. Photo credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images
The Guns of September
Understanding the options available to the Trump administration requires understanding how we got to this point in the first place. The United States has made its fair share of mistakes in Syria. But the current predicament is largely the result of choices Erdogan made that pushed the United States to partner with the Kurds as the only viable anti-Islamic State force in northern Syria.
The story starts in September 2014, when Islamic State militants assaulted Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish border town under YPG control since 2012, pushing more than 100,000 refugees into Turkey. Turkey moved tanks to the border, but as the world watched jihadists lay siege to the city, Turkish forces refused to intervene on the YPG’s behalf. Kurds on the Turkish side were also blocked from entering Syria to help. Turkish officials saw Kobani as a fight between two terrorist entities, and Erdogan initially conditioned any Turkish assistance to the town on the YPG distancing itself from the Syrian regime, dismantling its administrative cantons in northeastern and northwestern Syria, and committing not to threaten the Turkish border.
In mid-October 2014, Obama authorized an air drop to provide Kurdish fighters desperately needed medical supplies and ammunition. Ankara and Washington then managed to broker an arrangement allowing Iraqi Peshmerga forces to transit Turkey into Kobani to help reinforce the YPG. (The Turks hoped that Iraqi Peshmerga forces aligned with Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani would help counterbalance YPG influence.) Over the next three months, with the help of coalition airstrikes, thousands of Islamic State militants were killed and the YPG eventually succeeded in repelling the onslaught.
As the battle for Kobani raged, U.S. and Turkish officials began discussing the conditions for the U.S.-led coalition to gain access to Turkish air bases, as well as the extent of U.S.-Turkish cooperation to push the Islamic State off Turkey’s border. The U.S. Special Envoy for the Counter-Islamic State Coalition at the time, retired Gen. John Allen, and his deputy, Brett McGurk, worked up a proposal that would open up Turkish bases — which were already used by the United States for unarmed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) flights — for armed-ISR and strike missions against the Islamic State. The plan also included an ambitious joint U.S.-Turkish effort to identify, vet, train, and arm Syrian opposition forces, backed by U.S. and Turkish air power, to clear the Islamic State from the entirety of the Turkey-Syria border. There was even talk of introducing Turkish special operations forces as advisers to work alongside these fighters.
In late November 2014, I accompanied Vice President Joe Biden for two days of talks with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Erdogan in Istanbul (where Erdogan often preferred to hold meetings). The primary goal was to get the Allen-McGurk proposal, which had been worked on extensively with senior Turkish officials, across the goal line. In Biden’s meeting with Davutoglu, the vice president secured Davutoglu’s agreement to the joint plan. Biden then met with Erdogan, who clearly had different priorities. During nearly five hours of talks, Biden acknowledged Erdogan’s concerns over U.S. support to the YPG in Kobani, while noting that Turkey also supported highly problematic groups from the U.S. perspective, including Ahrar al-Sham, a powerful hardline Salafist force which often worked closely with al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. Biden urged Erdogan to put these differences aside by embracing the Allen-McGurk proposal. To address Erdogan’s concerns about the YPG, the United States and Turkey would identify an alternative, jointly vetted anti-Islamic State force. Erdogan was open to the proposal, but with one condition: the United States first had to impose a no-fly zone over all of northern Syria, including Aleppo city.
This was not a new request. For two years, Erdogan had pushed to establish a safe zone in Syria’s northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib to stem the flow of Syrian refugees and provide an area for anti-Assad rebels to organize and train, backed by a no-fly zone to keep Assad’s planes at bay. Yet despite the threat being on Turkey’s doorstep, and the fact that Turkey possessed the most powerful land army and air force in the region, Erdogan was unwilling to directly intervene. Instead, he preferred that the United States take the lead in establishing these zones. The Obama administration’s campaign against the Islamic State, and the U.S. request for Turkish base access, was seen by Erdogan as useful leverage to achieve this longstanding objective.
Erdogan’s decision to play hardball stemmed from the priority he placed at the time on toppling Assad over combatting the Islamic State and other extremist groups. Indeed, for the first few years of the war, Ankara’s commitment to regime change led Turkey to impose few restrictions on the transit of anti-Assad fighters across the border into Syria. Even as the Islamic State spread in eastern Syria and the influence of al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate grew among the northern opposition — including groups Turkey worked with — toppling Assad remained the focus of Erdogan’s policy.
Ultimately, Erdogan believed the specific threat the Islamic State posed to Turkey could be managed through a live-and-let live approach: if Turkey left the Islamic State alone in Syria, the Islamic State would not conduct attacks in Turkey. Erdogan therefore saw cooperation against the Islamic State as a favor to Washington, rather than something that was vital to Turkish national security. Thus he was intent on extracting a concession in return — namely, a commitment for the U.S. military to directly confront the Assad regime.
That condition proved to be a deal breaker. Imposing a no-fly zone would require the United States to take out Syria’s air defenses and shoot down Syrian aircraft. In the absence of a clear military end game, an international mandate, or domestic authorization, Obama was unwilling to enter into a direct conflict with the Assad regime. Moreover, the Pentagon told the president that a no-fly zone would require significant air and ISR assets to police it, directly trading off with the scarce resources needed for the anti-Islamic State campaign and operations in Afghanistan.
YPG women fighters stand near a check point in the outskirts of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobani, Syria. Photo credit: AHMET SIK/Getty Images
Turning Points
In the absence of U.S.-Turkey agreement, the Pentagon backed the only forces willing and able to take on the Islamic State in northern and eastern Syria: the YPG and affiliated Syrian Arab militias. After holding Kobani and regrouping, the YPG and their Arab allies went on the offensive in the spring of 2015. By mid-June they had seized Tal Abyad, one of two key Islamic State border crossings in northern Syria (the other being Jarabulus), gaining control of all but 60 miles of the Turkey-Syria border (see the maps below). Capturing Tal Abyad was particularly consequential since the Islamic State used the crossing to flow men, leaders, material, and explosive mixtures directly south into Raqqa, and often on to Iraq.
Map: Areas of Control, May 2015
(Source: Institute for the Study of War)
Map: Areas of Control, Late June 2015
(Source: Institute for the Study of War)
Meanwhile, Erdogan’s belief that Turkey could avoid being attacked by the Islamic State proved unfounded. On July 20, 2015, a bombing carried out by the Islamic State killed 33 people and wounded more than 100 in the southern Turkish city of Suruc. Many of the victims were Kurds. Several days later, PKK militants killed two Turkish policemen, claiming the attack as retaliation for Turkey conspiring with the Islamic State.
On July 22, 2015, following a phone call between Obama and Erdogan, Turkey agreed to open up Incirlik and other Turkish air bases to the U.S. coalition; strike missions began a few weeks later. Erdogan’s decision was prompted by the growing threat posed by the Islamic State. But, even more, it was motivated by Erdogan’s desire to check Kurdish expansion. Washington and Ankara agreed to work to identify vetted Syrian opposition forces to clear the Islamic State from the remaining 60 miles of the border not controlled by the Kurds — an area between the crossings at Azaz (in northwestern Syria) and Jarabulus (on the bank of the Euphrates River) known as the Manbij pocket. But Turkey was slow to identify opposition forces willing to prioritize fighting the Islamic State over Assad.The Pentagon’s “train-and-equip” program intended to stand up 5,000 opposition fighters per year struggled for the same reason, and had to be reoriented to focus on groups already combating the Islamic State on the ground. As a result, despite devoting nearly half of coalition ISR and strike missions flown out of Incirlik in this period to operations in the Manbij pocket, little progress was made.
In the face of these challenges, U.S. reliance on the YPG to combat the Islamic State continued to deepen. In October 2015, the Obama administration deployed a contingent of 50 U.S. special operations forces to improve training, planning, and support to Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces east of the Euphrates, who were rebranded as the SDF.
During another vice presidential trip to Istanbul in January 2016, Biden and other senior U.S. officials spent hours poring over maps of Iraq and Syria with Erdogan and his aides. Top on Biden’s agenda was conveying to Erdogan the urgent need to clear the Islamic State from Manbij City. The city was a key transit point for foreign fighters, a primary supply line to Raqqa, and a hub for Islamic State militants involved in external plotting. Indeed, U.S. officials believed that a number of the individuals involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks passed through Manbij. The U.S. proposal was to use the SDF to cross the Euphrates and push west to the city. But Ankara objected, seeing any SDF move into the Manbij pocket as a step toward unifying Kurdish cantons, and thus a geographic red line. In lieu of the SDF, Erdogan assured Biden that Turkey had thousands of opposition fighters ready to move east from the Azaz-Marea corridor area toward Jarabulus and then turn south to Manbij City.
The Obama administration agreed to hold off on using the SDF to work with Turkey. Yet only a few hundred Turkish-backed fighters materialized. In April, a small Turkish-backed force composed of Turkman, Free Syrian Army, and Salafist factions — supported by coalition air power — made a push to seize al-Rai (22 miles east of Azaz) and a number of other border villages moving toward Jarabulus. After some initial success, however, Islamic State militants regrouped and routed the Turkish-backed groups. On net, the operation lost ground.
With the Turkish play a bust, the United States once again swung behind the SDF alternative. In late May 2016, the SDF crossed the Euphrates headed toward Manbij City. After months of bloody battle, with thousands of casualties on both sides, the Islamic State stronghold fell to the SDF on August 12.
Two weeks later, Turkey finally discovered a larger opposition force and decided to intervene in Syria.
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