Ankara seeks to exert influence at its rival’s expense - analysis

Turkish forces launched a series of airstrikes over the past week on Kurdish targets in Syria and northern Iraq. The strikes came in response to an earlier attack by the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) on a state-run defense company in Ankara, killing five people. The location of the Turkish counter-strikes reflects a complex three-way interplay going on between the Turks, the Syrian Kurds, and the US.

First, the attack itself: Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS), the company targeted, is engaged in the design and manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), civilian and military aircraft, and other defense industry items. In recent years, UAVs have been playing a central role in the long conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK.

The Turks have been able, through the use of its Bayraktar TB2 and Anka drones, to locate and kill Kurdish fighters and commanders even in their positions in the remote and inaccessible Qandil Mountains. This has threatened to transform the conflict by making the PKK’s continued insurgency untenable. The PKK has been at war with Turkey since 1984.

Recent reports suggest that the PKK has succeeded to some degree in its response to the drone threat. In March, the movement issued a statement, accompanied by footage, claiming to have downed 13 Turkish drones since February 2023.

The provenance of the PKK’s emergent anti-drone capacity is not clear. Some reports point to PKK companies that import Chinese counter-drone technology. Others have suggested that the movement has acquired Iranian “kamikaze drones” in Iraq through various channels, possibly including elements within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The PKK has also developed tunnels to counter the Turkish advantage in this regard.

But the precise tactical details aside, the choice of TUSAS as a target for the attentions of the PKK will not surprise observers of this conflict.

The timing of the attack, nevertheless, is strange. It followed reports in regional media of efforts underway to resume peace negotiations between the Turkish government and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Devlet Bahceli, a Turkish ultra-nationalist ally of the current government, announced on October 22 that the harsh conditions of Ocalan’s imprisonment should be reviewed if he agrees to the disbandment of the PKK. The PKK leader, in jail since 1999, was also permitted to see members of his family last week, the first time in four years.

Some observers speculate that the Ankara attack might have come from elements among the PKK leadership opposed to the revival of negotiations, or who wish to remind the Turkish government, and perhaps also Ocalan himself, that there are other centers of power in the movement that need to be consulted, or reckoned with, should the diplomatic process be revived.

TURKEY’S SWIFT response to the Ankara attack followed a familiar pattern. Turkish forces struck targets both in Iraq, in the Qandil mountains area, and in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria. In the latter area, as in the past, the Turks targeted facilities related to critical infrastructure, according to officials of the Kurdish-dominated Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES). These included water and power stations, oil wells, and bakeries.

Turkey has denied that it had targeted civilian facilities. A Turkish Defense Ministry statement contended that “precautions” had been taken to prevent harm to civilians. Despite this, 12 civilians were killed, including two children, and 25 wounded, according to a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) statement. The Turkish Defense Ministry statement noted that 28 targets in northern Iraq, and 18 in northern Syria, had been struck.

In an interview with al-Monitor this week, Gen. Mazlum Abdi, an SDF commander, rejected Turkish government claims that the two PKK militants who carried out the Ankara attack had entered Turkey from the Kurdish-controlled part of Syria.

Ankara has offered no proof for this claim, which would seem to be counter-intuitive. The PKK does not lack militants and underground infrastructure in Turkey itself, and in Qandil. Ankara is 950 km. from the Syrian border.

Abdi called the claims “baseless,” saying that the SDF and the Autonomous Administration had “absolutely no connection” to the attack or the people who carried it out.

Abdi’s statements reflect a core dispute between the AANES/SDF in Syria and the Turkish government. Ankara regards these forces as unambiguously aligned with the PKK, and constitute an integral element of that movement.

The AANES and SDF themselves reject this claim, contending that while much of the leadership of these structures undoubtedly emerged from the PKK, this authority has now outgrown its roots, and constitutes a separate entity.

The distinction matters – not only because of Turkish targeting, but also because the SDF is the partner force of the US, in the roughly 30% of Syria that it controls. Nine hundred US servicemen are deployed in this area, which comprises Syria east of the Euphrates.

Officially, the partnership is concerned with the ongoing fight against ISIS. In practice, it has in many ways developed beyond this beginning, with the SDF representing a rare American success in working with local client forces.

Control of Syria east of the Euphrates gives the US a say in any discussion of Syria’s future. The area contains the country’s oil and gas resources, and much of its best agricultural land.

There is also strategic significance for controlling this area, beyond the Syrian context. The AANES-controlled area, for as long as it remains under US and allied stewardship, constitutes a large de facto buffer zone against Iranian freedom of movement from Iraq to regime-controlled Syria. It is for this reason that Iran and its allies are working to try to force the US to leave.

Turkey notes the emergence of the de facto partnership between the US and the SDF with seething displeasure. Ankara’s partnerships in Syria with a chaotic selection of Sunni jihadi and Islamist groups clearly cannot offer a viable alternative to the centralized, disciplined, and secular SDF, despite Turkish claims to the contrary.

The PKK, from which the SDF emerged, remains a designated terror group by both the US and the EU. The obvious Turkish tactic – to drive a wedge between the West and the SDF – is an attempt to taint the latter with the PKK association. The targeting of northeast Syria after the Ankara attack appears to constitute an example of this.

An AANES official I spoke to noted, interestingly, that Turkey’s preference for targeting civilian rather than military infrastructure in the AANES-controlled area is a product of the complexity of the situation. The US relationship is only with the SDF, the armed element. Washington does not recognize the legitimacy of AANES, making it an easier subject for Turkey’s attentions.

The official also noted that he and his colleagues believe that the US offers a kind of tacit permission to Turkey to carry out a “retaliation” against the Syrian Kurds after PKK attacks in Turkey, as long as the attacks remain limited in time and scope.

Competition for influence 

The competition for influence between Ankara and the Syrian Kurds is a product of the current flux in the geopolitical situation in the region. Turkey, officially a NATO ally, is in practice an energetic supporter of political Islam in the Middle East and therefore backs several actively anti-Western Islamist movements. The SDF, though it emerged from an active insurgent organization, is today one of the more stable pro-Western forces in the Middle East. Both are on a trajectory, traveling in opposite directions.

Against the background of the unresolved conflict between Turks and Kurds, demonstrated by the Ankara attack, Ankara seeks to exert influence at its rival’s expense. The unfortunate residents of northeast Syria are, apparently, regarded as collateral damage.