Turkey faces multiple dilemmas in Syria
Ankara’s Kurdish phobia underlies its inability to come up with realistic strategies that will also serve its own long-term security interests.
Turkey’s inability to produce a realistic strategy toward Syria and to coordinate its policy with its allies is coming home to roost, leaving it facing multiple dilemmas that are unlikely to be resolved soon. Ankara’s war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its related effort to prevent Kurds from gaining ground in northern Syria remains Turkey’s main problems.
This complicates, if not prevents, headway by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in the region. Washington, by its own admittance, is trying to maintain a delicate balance between Ankara and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the umbrella organization of the Syrian Kurds, which Turkey says is a terrorist group linked to the PKK.
