Last week, Kurdish forces fighting for the Syria-based Democratic Union Party (PYD) wrested control of the border town of Tel Abyad from the Islamic State. The seizure of the town cut off a key supply line to the Islamic State’s de-facto capital in Raqqa and allowed for the unification of two Kurdish controlled cantons, Kobane and Jazira, between which sits Tel Abyad.
The victory came after the Islamic State nearly defeated PYD forces in Kobane last October, before the dramatic increase in coalition air strikes helped turn the tide of the battle. During the Islamic State’s siege of Kobane, the United States set up a conduit for the PYD to provide targeting data to a military planning office in Erbil, which is then relayed to coalition aircraft. The PYD has since relied heavily on U.S. airpower to aid in their advance and eventual capture of IS-held territory.
Neighboring Turkey has shunned the PYD, owing to its close links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a U.S., EU, and Turkish-designated terror group that has been waging an on-and-off-again conflict against the Turkish state for more than three decades. Ankara does not differentiate between the two groups and argues that the PYD’s actions in Syria are tantamount to ethnic cleansing, and part of a broader effort to create a PKK-allied state along its longest land border.
The United States has ignored Turkey’s concerns, pointing to the group’s success against the Islamic State and its distance from Islamist rebel groups — most of which Turkey supports — as the reasons for its continued support. American policy has thus helped to create a Kurdish-controlled enclave in Syria that is hostile to Turkish interests, both inside Turkey and throughout areas in northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq. Further still, the United States has indirectly signaled that it will now protect Kurdish gains, lest it risk the Islamic State overrunning Kurdish forces in an organized counter attack.
This poses a problem for Turkey. Ankara has pursued on-and-off-again peace negotiations with the PKK since 2006. The Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led process was primarily aimed at ending the violence and creating a viable pathway for the PKK to rely on democratic politics to advance its cause, rather than violence. The two sides agreed to a cease-fire in 2013, but the talks eventually stalled after the AKP demanded that the PKK disarm before negotiations advanced to the next stage. The PKK, in contrast, conditioned its disarmament on the AKP taking more steps to grant Kurdish rights in Turkey.
From the outset of the negotiations, the Turkish state had two interrelated goals: end the violence and undermine the PKK’s popular support. The AKP was eager to create a counterweight to the PKK’s brand of Kurdish nationalism — and thus sought to win the political support of Turkey’s pious Kurds. In doing so, the AKP hoped that ending the violence, the reintegration of Kurds in Turkish society, and improved economic conditions in the southeast would eventually render the PKK obsolete and provide an electoral boon for the AKP in the process.
The AKP had some success in marginalizing the PKK. The loosening of cultural restrictions and the improved economic climate in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast did appeal to many pious Kurds. However, during the battle for Kobane, the AKP adopted hostile rhetoric that helped undermine its support in Kurdish majority areas. Ankara’s ongoing hostility toward the PYD continued to turn off Kurdish voters and eventually resulted in the mass defection of support from these former AKP-supporting religious Kurds to the PKK-linked Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — Turkey’s fourth largest political party.
The AKP and HDP used to be natural allies. The two parties worked together closely on the peace process, before disagreements during the campaign resulted in the freezing of the negotiations. The schisms between the two parties have since grown wider, particularly over the Syrian Kurdish issue. The HDP welcomed the fall of Tel Abyad, for example, saying that every PYD victory against the Islamic State is beneficial for regional security. The AKP, in contrast, has blamed the PYD for uprooting Arab and Turkmen villagers and criticized the United States for giving the “terrorist PYD” direct air support.
This schism has raised concerns that the fragile cease-fire could fail and that the PKK and Turkish state could return to conflict. However, this is unlikely in the near term. The change in American attitudes, combined with the favorable media coverage, create an incentive for the PKK to refrain from attacking Turkey. The PKK’s global image has improved dramatically in recent months, with its female brigades winning favorable attention in international media outlets, and being lauded as the only force capable of defeating the Islamic State. This favorable media coverage has reinvigorated efforts to lobby EU and American policymakers to remove the group from their respective lists of terrorist organizations.
The group’s removal from these lists is unthinkable, given the resistance from Turkey, a NATO ally. Nevertheless, the PYD retains an interest in retaining Western support, especially now that it has united its territory in Syria, and will surely be thinking about winning support for democratic autonomy — or outright independence — in a post-Bashar al Assad Syrian state. Turkey will certainly resist these efforts, but for now the United States appears to have concluded that the PYD is a viable fighting force, worthy of direct air support.
The empowerment of the PYD will have domestic and political repercussions for Turkey. The group’s control of territory in Syria will remain a significant concern for Turkish security and foreign policy officials. For now, both sides have an incentive to refrain from escalating the situation. The PYD would lose international credibility, while Turkey could risk being dragged into the Syrian conflict. However, looking beyond the current conflict, Ankara must now contend with the unthinkable: an American-supported PKK allied statelet along its longest land border. These two actors are certain to remain hostile to each other, giving way to a choice: Ankara could reinvigorate the peace process and try to make peace with the PKK, or it could choose to try to eliminate the threat. This choice suggests continued turmoil in Syria — and perhaps an unintended consequence of the American decision to intervene in the Syrian conflict.
Aaron Stein is a Nonresident Fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, a Doctoral Fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, and an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Photo credit: Defense Imagery
Lars 
azad 
Christer Carlsomn 
Kelly Cowan 
CBCalif 
Mark T 
The Kurds are the only fighters who really want to fight the ISIS-Terrorists. The turkish Government Supports the Jihadists and is a Nato-ally, how can be this?
Everybody know the Kurds are no terrorists, how long will the West call the brave fighters of YPG/PKK terrorists?
Hello Aaron
PYD is a polical party, not fighting. YPG is the military force.
You have very good Analysis.
The Kurds needs Help from western.
Best regards
Azad
I dont get it…? How can a PhD make such a mistake as mixing the political party PYD with the military YPG..?
Rojava is NOT going to be a PPKistan. That is just plain stupid and makes me as a reader wonder why this text is written in the first place.
If the US was consistent in it’s alleged support of justice and freedom in the world it would have supported the PKK and helped resolve it’s issues with Turkey a long time ago. Kurds in Turkey are no longer seeking carve a homeland out of what is now known as Turkish territory, they are only seeking the right to speak and teach their own language, and to teach their history and culture in schools to their children. Imagine if Jewish or Koreans, or any immigrant group in the United States were forbidden these rights, and herded into forced assimilation and the generational destruction of their cultures and languages. Turkey has good reason to mistrust and worry about the PKK as long as they continue to insist on fulfilling their dream of a reborn Ottoman caliphate, and the Turkifacation of all of the ethnic groups living within it’s borders.
The Erdogan government has turned it’s back on Gülen and the CIA who put them in power in the first place. Now, as a NATO member Turkey is buying weapons from China and Russia. This is not looked upon favorably by the US or it’s NATO partners. Turkey has refused to let the US use the Incirlik Air Base to launch coalition air raids on Daesh, and insist on setting up a “safe zone” in Rojava as a pretext to occupy the Kurdish north in Syria. Turkey has been, and continues to be, the facilitator and patron of Daesh, and numerous other far right Islamic militant groups in Syria. To say the very lest, not one of these militant Islamist groups Turkey supports have any plans “to tolerate religious minorities” or “offer a wide range of opportunities to women.” They are all intent on the establishment of Sharia rule and the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria, and all of them see both the Assad government and the Kurds in Rojava as their enemies. It is fairly well established that; Daesh are selling their oil and receiving all of their goods and weapons through Turkey, that injured Daesh fighters are transported to, and treated in Turkish hospitals, that most of the foreign Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq entered the region through Turkey, and that Turkey has ignored and/or facilitated this process. Turkey is known as the “jihadist highway” for good reason.
The YPG/YPJ, MFS and PKK have all been fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga KRG against Daesh in Iraq, and the Kurdish controlled region now stretches from Halabja in eastern Iraq to the Euphrates River in Western Syria. With the fall of Tel-Abyad last week, the YPG and it’s Assyrian and Arab allies only have to take from Jarabulus at the Euphrates River, west to the Efrin Canton and Turkey’s entire southern border with Syria and Iraq will be under Kurdish PYD and or KRG control.
The PDY is not the PKK, this is just a convenient excuse for Turkey to treat the PYD in Rojava as a terrorist group. What Turkey is most concerned about is the military and political success that the PYD, YPG, YPJ, MFS, and FSA are having in Rojava. The sealing of Turkey’s southern border with Syria by the YPG and it’s allies will end the land route for Turkey’s resupply and trade with Daesh and all of the other Islamist military groups they have been helping.
I see very few possibilities for the future of Erdogan’s rule in Turkey. He will either give in to the wishes of the US or he will be removed. He is left with only a few options militarily speaking with regards to Syria. Erdogan will either go it alone and invade Rojava with the Turkish Army in order to institute his “safe zone” occupation there, or he will sit back and watch his ability to help his Islamist patrons in Syria completely cut off.
While anything is possible, I doubt Erdogan will have the Turkish Army to involve itself in any of the surrounding conflicts. The Turkish Army is a shell of its once (then exaggerated) self. Erdogan’s arrest of so many Turkish Military Officers basically ruined that Army. Most of their men are short term draftees — who no heart or interest in fighting for Erdogan or anyone else outside of their home. They were sent into Kurdish areas a couples of times in recent years and performed poorly — were easily ambushed. Even their Air Force now operates poorly. The fact that a Syrian Missile Battery could so easily shoot down an upgraded F-4 a number of years ago speaks volumes — especially to anyone understands how that occurred, and never should have given the electronics carried by that aircraft.
That is why Erdogan is all talk and no action. He also knows the Russians back the Syrians, and if they sent pilots to fly for the Syrians in the event of a Turkish invasion, they would cut the Turks to pieces, and Israel would stand by and watch, as they have no interest in securing Erdogan’s future or assisting him.
Of course, Erdogan is also all talk and no action because of his close ties with the Sunnis groups in Syria including ISIL and Turkey is benefiting from the lower cost oil they are receiving from that group and from the Kurds.
It is an interesting world, the Iranians are trying to restore the Persian Empire — with a Shiite religious base and Erdogan dreams of reestablishing the Ottoman Empire.
Much better to provide air support for secular socialists like PKK then the usual alternative of far-right religious wackos.
Here’s a tid-bit about one of our two-bit worthless back-stabbing allies in the latter category:
“More recently, after ascending the throne, Salman presented the 2015 King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam to an Indian Muslim televangelist infamous for describing the 9/11 attacks as “an inside job” led by President George W. Bush.”
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/saudi-connection-wahhabism-and-global-jihad