Turkey's War on Rojava
US President Donald Trump (R) with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (L) at the United Nations General Assembly (2017) Source: White House
By Sami El-Sayed
On 9 October, a new phase of the war in Syria began when the Erdoğan regime commenced its invasion of Rojava. Within days, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and mass killings of civilians by the Turkish military and its allied militia groups were endemic. Internationally, ordinary people witnessed the Erdoğan regime’s atrocities with revulsion and outrage.
The Erdoğan regime got a de facto greenlight for the invasion when US President Trump ordered the immediate withdrawal of US troops from North Syria. This marked one of the latest confused blunders by US imperialism in the region, with widespread surprise and opposition immediately developing amongst both the Republicans and Democrats in the United States. In what was widely considered a “betrayal”, the US military’s rapid withdrawal from the region left the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), predominantly comprised of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/J), exposed to attack from the Turkish military.
Turkish invasion
The invasion’s stated aim was to, firstly, create what the Erdoğan regime called a “safe zone” in North Syria. The Erdoğan regime intends to forcibly transfer two million Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey to this safe zone, and in fact has already begun deportations despite it being an active warzone.
The second aim was to remove what Turkey sees as a security threat to its South, the YPG. It has been a longstanding aspiration of the Erdoğan regime to dismantle the de facto Kurdish autonomous region in North and East Syria (Rojava). The Turkish political establishment sees Kurdish autonomy in Syria as the source of a potential contagion in Turkey, where 14 million Kurds, largely concentrated in South East Turkey, have long been oppressed. Additionally, Rojava is seen as a base for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a left nationalist group banned upon its founding in 1978 as a result of various Turk-supremacist laws, to strike into Turkey.
The third aim of the Erdoğan regime was to split a developing opposition inside Turkey. The left, multiethnic HDP had made a series of alliances with the Kemalist CHP, successfully challenging Erdoğan’s AKP in Istanbul and Ankara, winning the Mayoral positions. By launching a fresh attack on Kurds, the Erdoğan regime successfully managed to break the CHP away from the anti-war HDP, and brought the CHP in behind the government.
This isn’t the first incursion into Syria by Turkey. In 2018, Turkey invaded and occupied Afrin, defeating the SDF in the region and instituting what can only be described as a reign of terror, and previously invaded Syria in 2016/17, again to attack the Kurds. If Turkey manages to make significant, permanent, gains from this war effort, it will likely attack again in the future if the situation is favourable.
Background
Turkey has an extensive and ongoing history of forced cultural assimilation, political repression and general restriction on all non-Turkish minorities, including banning the speaking of the Kurdish language (completely up until the 1990’s). Restrictions were relaxed briefly following the “Kurdish Opening” in 2009, but hardened again in 2015.
The PKK has engaged in decades of insurgency against the Turkish state, originally with the goal of forming a separate nation-state of Kurdistan. In the mid-1990’s, the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, brought the PKK through an ideological change away from Maoism and towards Democratic Confederalism, and the PKK’s goal has shifted towards Kurdish autonomy within Turkey. In 2012, the PKK and Turkish government began peace talks, but these collapsed in 2014/2015 when the Turkish government restarted its armed campaign against the PKK in response to the PKK’s military operations against ISIS in Syria, particularly the heroic defence of the city of Kobanî 2014, as well as the June 2015 election results which saw the HDP get more than 10% of the votes, and the AKP losing its majority.
The conflict escalated with the deployment of the Turkish military to Turkish Kurdistan in response to declarations of autonomy by various Kurdish-majority cities. Faced with stiff resistance, the regime has destroyed entire cities, and displaced over half a million people internally in Turkey. This new war against the “PKK” - in reality, against the Kurdish people - was followed by another election in November 2015, which saw the AKP resecure its majority.
In 2016, the attempted military coup d’état in Turkey resulted in further deterioration of the situation, with the Erdoğan regime extending its repression out to the general population and using it as a pretext to engage in mass purges. Since 2016, over 120,000 people have been purged with over 40,000 detained. Thousands of schools and civil society organisations have been forcibly shut down, along with dozens of media outlets and universities. At least 19 trade unions have been forcibly shut down. A dystopian scoring system has been introduced to measure an individual’s or organisation’s proximity to Fethullah Gülen (who Erdoğan accuses of the coup attempt) with over 11 million people under some form of investigation by the Turkish state.
Weakening of US Imperialism
In the aftermath of the coup attempt, US-Turkey relations rapidly deteriorated, with the US refusing to extradite Gülen to its NATO ally. This has been the latest stage in the United States’ declining power in the region, with its failure to topple Assad, coupled with increasingly losing political control of Iraq. Seeing the opening, Russia has been making moves to form closer relations with the Erdoğan regime, creating a rather unprecedented situation where a NATO member is colder towards the United States than it is towards the historic enemy of NATO, Russia.
Under the misleadership of President Trump, US imperialism is falling into deeper crisis. With Trump’s unpredictable behaviour and tendency to ignore the US military intelligence apparatus, US allies are seeing the US as increasingly unreliable and discredited. Trump’s threat to stop military aid to Ukraine if they didn’t investigate Joe Biden is just one example.
The US was completely unable to extract any concessions from the Erdoğan regime in its ceasefire negotiations, instead recognising Turkey’s complete control over its desired “safe zone” and offering the dismantling of all YPG heavy weapons and defensive positions, and all sanctions would be lifted. In short, the Erdoğan regime would achieve everything it wanted and all punishments by the US for their actions would be rescinded! In military terms, that’s called an unconditional surrender.
Whilst a section of the US capitalist class has been pushing for withdrawal from Syria for a number of years, Trump’s move can only be seen as a blow to US prestige and power in the region, and risks US control over oil resources in the area. Additionally, the move flies in the face of the long term interests of US imperialism to keep Syria destabilised to prevent a regroupment in the region to the benefit of Russia or Iran.
People should not be fooled into believing this is just a benevolent move by Trump, done out of sincere anti-interventionist sentiment. The US troops have been moved from Rojava to Iraq, from where they plan to launch operations, allegedly against ISIS. Furthermore, US troops have been redeployed to East Syria, where the main concentration of oil fields is. An additional 3,000 troops have also been deployed to Saudi Arabia.
Russian intervention
Nothing reflects the rapid reversal in the balance of forces in Syria as Russian military forces occupying a base near Manbij that had been occupied by US forces just a day earlier. Under pressure from Turkey and losing their US ally, the SDF appealed to the Assad regime for reinforcements, and for the first time in years the regime occupied areas of Northern Syria as it raced to the frontlines.
In order to prevent the situation between its ally, the Assad regime, and Turkey, getting out of control, Russia deployed troops to act as a deterrent to a Turkish advance, as the US forces had done previously. As Russian troops were moving to replace the US troops that had just withdrawn, Putin and Erdoğan negotiated their own separate deal which, again, resulted in the YPG having to withdraw from the region, including major towns and villages which would result in the end of Rojava in reality. Specifically, the Assad regime and Russian forces are charged with clearing the area of the YPG instead of the Turkish forces, perhaps under the presumption that the Kurdish people may be more positive about being ethnically cleansed if done by Russians as opposed to Turks.
Regardless, the Turkish forces continue to be on a rampage in North Syria, pillaging their way across towns like Ras al-Ayn/Sari Kani, terrorising the local Arab and Kurdish populations. In recent days, Turkish regime propaganda has claimed that Russia and Turkey will “intervene” against violations of the deal - that is, continued SDF operations in North Syria. Currently, the Turkish regime is intentionally depriving over 400,000 people (mostly Kurds) of drinking water. Whatever false truce Russia has negotiated with Turkey does nothing for these people.
Role of the EU
Both the European Union and individual European member states hold a significant share of the responsibility for the situation in Syria, both in the material aid they’ve given to so-called “moderate” rebels and their direct military attacks. Despite being a key cause for the exodus of refugees from the region, the European Union and its member states refuse to take them in, instead signing a dirty deal with the Erdoğan regime. As part of that deal the EU pays Turkey €3 billion a year in order to place refugees illegally deported from the EU in camps in Turkey.
The utter hypocrisy should be clear, then, of the EU Commission President Juncker saying not to expect the EU to “pay for” Erdoğan’s war effort. EU member states sell billions in arms to Turkey every year in violation of the EU’s own rules without any consequences. Part of the pretext for Turkey’s invasion of Rojava is to create a zone to which the Erdoğan regime could forcibly transfer the millions of refugees currently residing in Turkey - refugees deported from the EU!
The EU is both giving billions a year to Turkey, and its member states are selling billions a year in arms to Turkey. Even Ireland holds some of the responsibility, selling millions of euros worth of military and dual use equipment to Turkey in 2016 alone. Let’s not forget Ireland’s own place in the global logistics chain of US imperialism through Shannon Airport, and the right wing capitalist establishment’s support for EU militarisation.
In response to the rather soft criticisms leveled by the European establishment at the invasion, Erdoğan threatened to “unleash” refugees into Europe. The cowards of the European capitalist establishment, feeling under pressure by the far right forces in their own countries around immigration, did not push their criticism of Erdoğan much further and continue to sell the regime weapons. The EU, both as an extraordinarily wealthy region, and as a party who is responsible for the creation of refugees, should accept all refugees without hesitation, not be cowed by a “threat” of more!
False friends
Whilst the US and Russia sign their own respective Munich Agreements, it’s somewhat uncertain what the stance of the SDF itself is. On the one hand, they thanked Russia for “saving” Syria’s Kurds, and on the other hand insist that they haven’t agreed to the deal that Russia negotiated, and continue to engage in military operations in the region. Should the SDF reject the deal in practice, the ambiguity of their position will be useful in buying them more time in preparation for Turkey’s threatened offensive if Russia fails to carry out its half of the bargain.
Should the SDF reject the proposal, the Assad regime will not want to engage in a military conflict with them and forcibly clear them out for Turkey, as it would likely create a pretense for the intensification of US involvement in the region.
There are a few alternatives then. One would be for Assad and Russia to withdraw from the North and let the SDF and Turkey battle it out - effectively ceding North Syria to Turkey, another would be to align with the SDF and call Turkey’s bluff in hopes that they won’t follow through on their threat. Finally, Russia could play both sides and engage in limited operations against the YPG in order to appease Turkey. How the Assad regime factors into these calculations is difficult to know. Considering the Syrian Army engaging the Turkish forces initially, and then abandoning the SDF to fight on their own, which way things are going remains uncertain.
In reality, Turkey is unlikely to carry out a continued invasion of Syria without Russia’s blessing. Even while Russian and Turkish troops face each other at the border, Russia is concluding arms deals with the Erdoğan regime, reflecting a relationship much warmer than it may appear on the surface, and both sides are now engaged in joint patrols of the region.
History has shown that the forces of imperialism only ever act in their own interests, and the developing relationship between Russia and Turkey indicates that despite their moves they are not a force that can be trusted. The people of Kurdistan will find no real allies among the US or Russia, nor will they with the very same Assad regime which brutally repressed Kurds for decades prior to the civil war.
The future
However, it would be absurd to moralise to the people of Rojava about the choices they must make. Oppressed peoples have a right to defend themselves from attack, and that also includes accepting aid from other forces, particularly in the form of weapons and intelligence.
It would be a mistake, however, to take this assistance with any illusions in the forces you receive it from, or doing so while blind to the potential consequences. Whilst the military support from the US during the Siege of Kobanî in 2014 was important in turning that battle around, and the YPG were fully justified in accepting it, it must also be recognised that US imperialism is hated by large sections of the Arab working class in the region for entirely legitimate and justifiable reasons, and perceived alignment with US imperialist interests runs the risk of alienating the Arab masses from the Kurdish struggle for democracy and self-determination.
Similarly, retaliatory attacks on Turkish civilian targets will, in the short term at least, inflame Turkish nationalist sentiment and cut across the building of an anti-war movement in Turkey. It would be a mistake to play further into the Erdoğan regime’s hands by allowing him to rally Turkish people behind a “war on terror”, which can act as a diversion from Turkey’s economic problems.
The people of Rojava, unfortunately, have been forced into these choices by the weakness of the international workers’ movement in this period, particularly in the Middle East where the momentous Arab Spring was thrown into the grinder of civil war and counter-revolution.
Developing movements
Despite that, things in the region are opening up once again. The protests in Lebanon make concrete the idea of a mass movement that cuts across sectarian divides in the region. The protests in Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and Algeria, give an indication that the trend of upsurges in struggle will continue, as part of what increasingly looks like a global wave of revolt.
Whilst the situation in Syria looks dire, the situation is not lost completely. Struggles in other countries in the region may, in time, give confidence to the workers and oppressed in Syria. The people of Rojava will have an important role to play in these struggles, and in building a multiethnic, anti-sectarian movement for democracy and socialism.
If we want the Kurdish people to escape the clutches of their false friends in the forces of imperialism, all supporters of democracy and self-determination must build an international anti-war movement based in the working class. Such a movement must speak out and struggle against the actions of our capitalists at home whilst providing solidarity for the people of Rojava in their struggle for self-determination and all the people's resistance against sectarianism, nationalism, ethnic cleansing and for democratic and economic rights in Syria and the whole Middle East.