Iraqi Kurdish leader Barzani to meet Syria SDF commander Kobane in historic step

Mazlum Kobane, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon’s top ally in the fight against the Islamic State, is expected to meet with Masoud Barzani, former president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the elder statesman of Kurdish politics worldwide, three well-placed sources have confirmed to Al-Monitor. 

The meeting will take place tomorrow at Barzani's mountain headquarters overlooking Erbil. The invitation was extended by Barzani through his envoy, Hamid Darbandi, who met with Kobane in northeast Syria on Monday, the sources said. 

The meeting, the first ever between the pair, will mark a major breakthrough in the Biden administration’s efforts to ease tensions between Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), which leads the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, and its Syrian Kurdish partners. The efforts are part of a broader US drive to avert further escalation between Turkey and the SDF and would see Ankara, Erbil and the SDF reach an accommodation that would allow the United States to coordinate security policies with all three allies, particularly the continued threat posed by the Islamic State. The bigger prize would be lasting peace between Turkey and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been waging an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984. 

The dramatic changes in Syria with the collapse of the Assad regime and the rise to power of the Sunni extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have added a layer of urgency for all stakeholders.  

Turkey’s main objective is to ensure that the PKK and its affiliates disarm and leave northeast Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed again on Wednesday that the PKK’s Syrian arm, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), would not be able to “escape the inevitable” if it failed to disarm. In other words, Turkey would mount another massive cross-border offensive against the group.  

The YPG forms the backbone of the SDF. Turkey wants the Pentagon to cease all cooperation with the group and has said that its own forces, in tandem with Syria’s new leadership, should be given the job, including running detention facilities holding thousands of highly dangerous jihadis and their families. 

Kobane has repeatedly warned that his men would have to pause operations against ISIS if faced with another Turkish invasion, as they did in 2019 when Turkey, with then-President Donald Trump’s assent, occupied large swaths of Kurdish-controlled territory across Turkey’s border with Syria. Turkey and its Sunni allies in the Syrian National Army have been steeped in fierce fighting with the SDF over the past month around the strategic Tishrin dam in neighboring Tabqa.  

A Syrian Kurdish official told Al-Monitor that Turkey’s intervention had been largely limited to drone strikes in support of the Syrian National Army but that since Monday, Turkish fighter jets had joined the fight “because the [SNA] is failing.” “We pick up a lot of Turkish chatter on enemy comms, which confirms that [ethnic Turkish] Turkmen forces from the Sultan Murad and the Suleyman Shah brigades have been deployed to the battlefield,” the official said, speaking not for attribution. 

For the KDP, the changes in Syria present an opportunity to sideline the PKK and to assert its influence over the local Kurdish population through its Syrian branch, known as the KDP-S. Barzani sees himself as the natural leader of millions of Kurds concentrated mainly in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, a role he inherited from his late father, the legendary Mullah Mustafa who spent a lifetime fighting for Kurdish rights.  

The Syrian KDP and a host of smaller opposition parties united under the Kurdistan National Council umbrella accuse the PYD of monopolizing power, granting impunity to its members, arbitrary detentions and vandalizing KNC offices. Washington’s past attempt to broker a deal between the sides failed, in part over Turkey’s demands that the dissolution of the PKK and the YPG be its main objective. 

Kobane’s balancing act 

Those demands will likely be echoed by Barzani in his meeting with Kobane, who was for long years a top figure in the PKK before taking charge of the battle against ISIS. As such, the assignation is fraught with risks. Will Kobane be able to strike a balance between the laundry list of conditions being rammed down the PKK’s throat and the PKK’s own demands for Kurdish rights in Turkey and now Syria?  

The answer rests in part with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Since April last year, the Turkish government has been holding secret talks with Ocalan, as first revealed by Al-Monitor. Their purported aim is to stave off multiple threats against Turkey stemming from the sea change in regional balances triggered by Hamas’ October 2023 assault on Israel.  

However, Erdogan’s career plans are undoubtedly as much in play, notably his need for constitutional changes that would enable him to run for a third term. He requires Kurdish support in the parliament to secure enough votes to hold a popular referendum for such changes. He could also hold elections ahead of their scheduled 2028 date to benefit from constitutional loopholes that would let him join the race. In both scenarios, he needs to be assured of victory. A deal with Ocalan that would grant him — and eventually his men — amnesty, and allowing Erdogan to declare the PKK’s defeat could give Turkey’s longest-serving leader enough Kurdish and Turkish nationalist votes to sweep him to power once again. 

Selahattin Demirtas, Turkey’s most popular Kurdish politician, recently announced his backing for the government’s initiative, making it easier for Ocalan to order his men to call off their fight, as would detente between Kobane and the Barzanis.  

Sources from the pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party, the third-largest in the Turkish Parliament, said that Ocalan is preparing to make that call on Feb. 15, the 26th anniversary of his capture by Turkish special forces in Nairobi, Kenya, if he is confident that the PKK’s top commanders in Iraqi Kurdistan will comply. Kobane’s meeting with Barzani will pile pressure on the rebels to do so amid war weariness among Kurds across the ideological divide.  

“It’s difficult to imagine that [the rapprochement] occurred outside of the context of potential new peace talks in Turkey. Iraqi Kurdish leaders have played important roles in previous peace efforts, going back to the PKK’s first cease-fire in 1993,” Meghan Bodette, research director at the Kurdish Peace Institute in Washington, told Al-Monitor. 

“The KRG has good relations with Turkey and an interest in seeing the transnational Turkish-Kurdish conflict resolved due to its impacts on the Kurdistan Region. If Iraqi Kurdish mediation can help Syrian Kurds integrate into a Syrian state that protects Kurdish rights and self-governance, this will promote stability and address some concerns of both sides,” Bodette concluded. 

This developing story has been updated since initial publication.