Turkey threatens further military intervention in northern Syria
The Syrian issue, one of the issues that has remained unchanged on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's agenda, represents a source of incessant friction between Ankara and Washington over US support for Turkey's persecuted Kurdish minority, and between Ankara and Moscow over Turkey's attempts to destabilise the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is itself strongly supported by the Kremlin.
Turkey issued a new veiled threat on Wednesday. A day after Erdoğan's statements, in which he threatened to take "the necessary measures in Syria", the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has assured that Turkey "will do whatever is necessary to eliminate the terrorists" in the north of the neighbouring country, referring to the People's Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia blamed for the death of two Turkish police officers in the region of Azaz with the launching of a guided missile last Sunday.
The YPG is the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), according to Ankara. The latter is considered "terrorist" by the European Union and the United States. It is also considered "terrorist" by the European Union and the United States, as well as by Turkey, with which it has had a decades-long conflict marked by diverging interests. The PKK seeks Kurdish autonomy, while Ankara defends the unity of the Turkish state and pursues the minority within and beyond its borders.
The Kurdish-Syrian YPG militia, however, has received military backing from Washington since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. The organisation, a parent of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has been known for fighting the jihadist threat of Daesh from the frontline. An endorsement that fractured US-Turkish relations and tilted their external action towards Russia.
This trend reached its climax with Turkey's purchase of the Russian s-400 anti-missile system, which triggered the imposition of sanctions on the Eurasian country by the United States. The arms acquisition still marks the bilateral agenda between Washington and Ankara, as President Biden has decided to distance himself from his Turkish counterpart despite Erdoğan's attempts at rapprochement, visible during the NATO summit.
The Biden administration has decided to freeze dialogue with Turkey. Erdoğan himself regretted that his relationship with the US president 'did not start well' after he was not received by the Democrat at the end of September in New York during the UN summit. In this regard, Biden sees Turkey's actions in Syria as a threat to national security for undermining the campaign against jihadism.
Putin did receive him, although relations with Russia are not much better. The two leaders met in the Russian city of Sochi, where they reviewed the latest developments in Syria. A conflict in which Moscow and Ankara are on opposite sides, especially in the region of Idlib, but in which they hoped to bring positions closer together in the coming months.
Çavuşoğlu, however, has accused both Washington and Moscow of "not keeping their word". "They were supposed to clear the area of terrorists, but they still have a presence there and have intensified their attacks," the diplomat said during Wednesday's appearance. For Turkey, in the words of the minister, "Russia and the United States are also responsible for the YPG attacks against Turkey because they have not kept their promises".
"We will do the job ourselves. We will do whatever it takes to clear these regions of YPG/PKK terrorists," concluded Çavuşoğlu, leaving the door open to the start of a new Turkish campaign in Syria that would come in addition to the four operations deployed since August 2017, known as Euphrates Shield, Olive Branch, Fountain of Peace and Spring Shield, which have marked the foreign action of Erdoğan's presidency.
