Syria’s Kurds faced with all-out war as Turkey, Sunni allies target Kobani 

The collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime following a lightning offensive led by al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and an array of Sunni factions supported by Turkey has created new realities on the ground for the country’s Kurds, who have since 2012 administered the northeast and eastern parts of the country. The overall picture is negative as the US-backed Syrian Kurdish Democratic Forces loses control of growing swaths of territory east of Afrin, including the towns of Tell Rifaat and Manbij lying to the West of the Euphrates River, to Turkish-backed Sunni opposition forces.

Turkish proxies, with support from Turkish airstrikes, advanced today toward the town of Kobani, according to well-informed sources on the ground, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed vows to crush “terrorist organizations such as ISIS and the PKK/PYD in other parts of the country as soon as possible.” They began their push after seizing control of Karakozak, a bridge that connects the western and eastern banks of the Euphrates River, despite fierce resistance from Kurdish forces.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984 for various forms of Kurdish self-rule. Turkey accuses the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which shares power in the Syrian Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), of being directly linked to the PKK. Erdogan, tellingly, did not mention the SDF, which is led by the PKK offshoot the People’s Protection Units and its all-female arm called the YPJ. The majority of the SDF forces, however, is made up of Arabs who Turkey hopes will join forces with Syria’s new leadership.

Kobani emerged as a symbol of Kurdish resistance when the town was besieged by ISIS in 2014 and Erdogan appeared to cheer them on, saying “Kobani is falling.” His perceived support for the jihadis provoked bloody riots inside Turkey, accelerating the collapse of peace talks between the government and the PKK and a ceasefire with the militants that formally ended in July 2015.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported that a Turkish drone had struck a military site on Kobani's Mishtanour Hill. The SDF said it had shot down a Turkish drone on Tuesday over al Darbasiyah in the Hasakah countryside amid unconfirmed reports that at least eight members of the same family had died in a Turkish airstrike on Tuesday morning in the village of Safiya, west of the town of Ayn Issa.

It is an existential moment for DAANES as it faces the prospect of being collapsed by the Turkish military and Sunni opposition factions. With Russia, the regime and Iran out of the picture, the Syrian Kurds have less room to cut deals that might have ensured their protection, leaving them squarely at the mercy of the United States, which has some 900 troops stationed in northeast Syria to ensure that ISIS doesn’t stage a comeback. President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the United States plans to keep US forces on the ground, but what of incoming President Donald Trump, who in 2019 ordered their withdrawal only to change his mind under bipartisan pressure from Congress? What future awaits Syria’s Kurds, and what are their options?

Current state of play 

The fate of hundreds of YPG and YPJ fighters who refused to leave Manbij despite a US-brokered agreement with Turkey for their safe exit from the city is still in play as the DAANES leadership continues to press for a deal. As Al-Monitor went to press, the SDF announced that it had called a ceasefire. Some hope that opposition forces will train their attack on the site of the nearby tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the Ottoman Sultan Osman I who founded the Ottoman Empire, instead of Kobani itself. In February 2015, when the peace talks between the PKK and the Turkish state were still ongoing, YPG forces cleared the path for Turkish troops to access the tomb via Kobani and to relocate the remains to a hill north of the Turkish border. It is easy to imagine that Turkey would like to plant its flag on the site once again and declare victory as Erdogan seeks to run for a third term in office in 2028 despite constitutional hurdles.

To be sure, the current offensive against Syrian Kurds is as much a result of the vacuum created by the regime’s collapse as it is part of Erdogan’s domestic agenda that has seen him and nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli offer carrots to imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan while engaging his fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan and northeast Syria.

The initiative began taking shape in October when Bahceli said that Ocalan could be granted amnesty if he ordered the PKK to end its war against Turkey. In short order, the PKK leader was allowed to meet with his nephew, a lawmaker in the pro-Kurdish DEM party, ending 43 months of isolation on the prison island where Ocalan has been held since his capture in 1999.

The government appears to be banking on Ocalan’s enduring popularity among millions of Kurds and the unerring loyalty pledged to him from the PKK’s top commanders, who said they would follow his lead. The talks, which began in April, may have included Syrian Kurdish officials, as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan hinted when he said, “They know their homework.”

The talks hit a wall over the status of northeast Syria, well-informed sources briefing Al-Monitor said, just as they did back in 2015, when Turkey was demanding that the Syrian Kurds join the Sunni opposition’s fight against Assad and they refused, choosing instead to consolidate their self-rule and maintain their neutrality in the conflict.

Turkey now insists that all non-Syrian PKK-linked cadres within DAANES and its security arm — in other words Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi Kurds — leave northeast Syria, though it is unclear where they would go, and that control over oil revenues that props up the autonomous administration be wrested from its control. At the same time, Ankara was discussing the possible integration of SDF forces within the Syrian army and that Syrian Kurdish opposition groups operating under the Kurdistan National Council (KNC) be allowed to share power. But that was when Ankara was concurrently seeking a deal with Assad to join forces against DAANES and to secure the return of millions of Syrians in Turkey amid rising anti-refugee sentiments among Turks that has hurt Erdogan at the ballot box.

The Kurdish side was demanding among other things that Kurds displaced by Turkey’s 2018 occupation of Afrin and its 2019 occupation of Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad be allowed to return.

With the regime gone, Ankara has strengthened its hand. It is demanding that SDF commander Mazlum Kobane publicly renounce all links with the PKK.

This may signal a softening of Ankara’s stance. With the demise of the peace talks in 2015, Kobane was placed on Turkey’s list of most wanted terrorists over his prior role inside the PKK and has survived at least two assassination attempts by Turkish forces. Or it could be a cynical ploy to split the movement, which would align with Ankara’s playbook.

However, the KNC is making similar calls on Kobane to publicly distance himself from the PKK, a senior KNC official told Al-Monitor.

“If the PKK does not show some flexibility and grant Mazlum a free hand, our opportunity as Kurds to stake out a strong position in Syria’s future will be lost. We will all sink together,” the official said.

Being Mazlum Kobane

Kobani is no stranger to Turkish officialdom. As the PKK’s chief representative in Europe in the 1990s he was approached by Turkish officials to help broker ceasefires and to carry messages from Ocalan to his lieutenants in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. He is often referred to as Ocalan’s “spiritual son.” The pair enjoyed a close relationship with the PKK leader when he was still based in Syria with the Assad regime’s blessing. The challenge facing Kobani is to navigate an end state where he can defend Kurdish gains over the past 12 years and consolidate them through outreach to Syria’s new leaders while accommodating Turkey but without compromising his credentials as a true son of the Kurds.

Ocalan (left) and Mazlum Kobane swimming together in Syria in an undated picture.

Since taking charge of the SDF in 2014 and establishing a tight working relationship with the Pentagon and State Department officials dealing with Syria, Kobane has matured into a sophisticated leader whose strategic smarts and charisma have made him indispensable to Washington in the fight against ISIS while forging alliances with Arab tribes in places like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.

He has the wherewithal to lead the Syrian Kurds beyond peril. But will he be given the opportunity? Ocalan, who is being gradually legitimized by Ankara after being labeled a “baby killer” for decades, may provide the answer.

Turkey’s Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc revealed on Tuesday that DEM’s request to meet with Ocalan was being assessed. “We will be working on an appropriate date for a meeting,” Yilmaz said. Should the meeting take place, Ocalan is likely to communicate a message to the PKK and the SDF through DEM lawyers. Its substance is likely being negotiated as of the time of this writing.

Old and new allies 

Unlike Turkey the Kurds enjoy strong bipartisan support in Congress. There will likely be a strong backlash against Turkey’s ongoing aggression and pressure on Trump once he takes office to intervene forcefully to make it stop. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has already threatened to draft sanctions against Turkey.

Israel has also publicly lent support to the SDF amid claims in the Israeli media that Israeli officials have been in direct contact with the group for the first time. “The attacks on the Kurds, as we saw yesterday in Manbij, must stop. There must be a commitment and actions by the international community to protect the Kurds, who fought bravely against ISIS. We have spoken with the US administration and other countries on this matter,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told reporters on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to exhort Trump once he takes office to stand by the Kurds. However, it's unclear how Israel can defend the Kurds other than diplomatically, and such clumsily vocal support is breeding deep resentment among many Arabs in the rest of Syria who despise the Jewish state. Israel’s real agenda will be to unsettle Turkey, with which its relations have hit bottom over the latter’s support for Hamas.

In any case, the bitter experiences of the past have taught the Syrian Kurds that the United States cannot be relied on and that Turkey, a critical NATO member, will always take precedence.

As such, HTS may emerge as a new partner for them as their leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani seeks to firm up its legitimacy inside Syria and beyond. Turkey’s support for the group remains vital and Ankara will undoubtedly prevail on Golani to not engage with the SDF unless the PKK is excised from Syria. But the Kurds reckon that now that Golani is in Damascus he has greater independence and understands the urgency of talking with them, if only to make nice with Washington in the immediate term.

Access to Syria’s oil wealth that is concentrated in areas under Kurdish control will be a key talking point going forward.

However, the other looming risk for Syria’s Kurds is that opposition forces will seek to take over the oil in Arab-majority Deir ez-Zor, where Turkey is actively seeking to turn Arab tribes against Kurdish rule, a senior SDF official speaking not for attribution told Al-Monitor. Regime-aligned groups in Deir ez-Zor city have been stoking unrest since the SDF moved in last week. A US-trained Arab militia known as the Syrian Free Army has since moved into the city as well while assuming joint control over the al-Bukamal border crossing with Iraq that served as a pipeline for Iranian weapons being ferried to Hezbollah in Lebanon prior to Assad’s fall.

In a related development, Abu al-Harith ash-Shu'ayti, a leader of the SDF-led Deir ez-Zor Military Council, announced his defection from the SDF on Tuesday.