In announcing the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 American troops in Syria, the Trump administration has, in one dramatic act, sought to recast the US-Turkey relationship, which has been in freefall over US partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State.
The SDF is mostly composed of forces from the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the gendarmerie of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey considers a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The United States also considers the PKK a terrorist organization.
In a phone call with President Donald Trump on Dec. 14, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed both to hold off on a threatened attack on the YPG and to finish the fight against the Islamic State, also known as by its Arabic acronym DAESH, in Syria.
Erdogan said Dec. 21 that “this is certainly not an open-ended waiting process,” referring to his decision to refrain from an attack on the YPG. “In the meantime,” he added, “within the framework of the phone call with Mr. Trump, we are and will work on our operation plans aimed at neutralizing the DAESH elements that are said to continue their existence in Syria. In other words, it is a must for everyone to know that in the months ahead we are going to pursue an operation plan that will eliminate both the PKK/PYD elements and the last vestiges of DAESH in the Syrian lands.”
Erdogan linked his approach to a broader call for security and reconstruction in Syria so that the nearly 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey can return home. The Turkish president also sang the praises of his country’s cooperation with Iran and Russia in Syria.
Erdogan linked his approach to a broader call for security and reconstruction in Syria so that the nearly 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey can return home. The Turkish president also sang the praises of his country’s cooperation with Iran and Russia in Syria.
The Trump-Erdogan agreement provides an opening, if a fragile and uncertain one, to work out an arrangement between the PYD and the Syrian government that will be acceptable to Ankara — the only realistic endgame for stability in northeastern Syria and, ultimately, the best check on the return of the Islamic State.
Al-Monitor has covered this trend and made this case since at least October 2016, when Mahmut Bozarslan broke the story of a meeting between the Syrian government and PYD officials mediated by Russian officials at Khmeimim air base in Syria. In August 2017, we wrote, “Turkey’s preoccupation with beating back Syrian Kurdish control in northern Syria could open the door to some type of accommodation with Damascus,” and we have continued to report and assess this trend since, avoiding the fashion and pitfalls of those advocating US support for local governance in northeastern Syria on the shoulders of the SDF. As we wrote in October, “It is difficult to envision how the United States will be able to rally any type of effective regional diplomacy around Syria while supporting Kurdish-backed local forces and local structures, which seem to muddle the US commitment to Syria’s unity, also a pillar of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, and give fuel to the Astana parties. Instead, the US approach has boxed the United States into an approach that limits Washington’s ability to divide the Astana group.”
Steven Simon, a former official in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, picked up this thread and made a similar case in The New York Times on Dec. 21 when he wrote that “there is just one candidate” to secure northeastern Syria following the Trump withdrawal: “the Assad regime.”
The new US-Turkish partnership in Syria might be an opportunity to put Syria on course toward security and reconstruction. It is, so far, not a done deal. Preventing a Syrian-Turkish conflict in the east and a bloodbath in Idlib require more than a phone call, Erdogan’s promises and the abrupt end of the US military presence. There is also the matter of preventing a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Syria or Lebanon. Akiva Eldar provides background on the subject of Hezbollah tunnels that enter Israel, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the UN Security Council to take up as an unacceptable security risk.
The new arrangement in Syria brings us back to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, we reported in August, has been the “man in the middle” between Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and between Netanyahu and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In July, Al-Monitor’s Ben Caspit broke the story of how Avigdor Liberman, then Israel’s defense minister, nixed a Russian deal to push Hezbollah and Iranian backed forces 100 kilometers (62 miles) back from the Israeli border. Axios this week reported on a related Russian effort this past fall. With the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, Netanyahu, whose military is seeking an “operational response to the American exit,” as Caspit reports this week, may want to revisit the Russian mediation effort, which the United States should support.
In September, our take was that Trump “should trust his instincts about the prospects for the art of the deal with Putin over Syria, as was discussed in Helsinki, and the need to avoid open-ended military commitments.” There are no illusions here about the administration’s constraints on dealing with Putin given the special counsel’s investigation into whether there was coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. Nonetheless, “There are other high stakes for US-Russian collaboration in Syria: preventing a conflict between Iran and Israel; defeating both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State; addressing the need for both a political transition that at a minimum reduces Assad’s power, or even leads to his eventual departure; planning for post-conflict stability as the war winds down; and assuring a responsible exit for American forces from an otherwise likely quagmire.” As we wrote in July, after the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, “Putin is not someone who works for free. If he believes he is helping Trump to achieve a responsible exit from Syria, while assuring Israel’s security, this is big stuff, and the Russian president also needs a win from the art of the deal.”
@ Michael S:
“against traditional American values”
I am in sympathy with you on this.
It is exactly in this situation that Fascism is taking root once more.
I will be covering this on my new site. Do not look now it is under construction.
@ yamit82:
You obviously feel this very strongly and I believe that this comes out of the historical issues arising out of how Christianity emerged from Judaism. I have always sympathized with the Jews on that.
@ Felix Quigley:
Felix,
Yamit simply does not understand US politics. This is understandable, since he lives in Israel.
Thank you for defending what I said. You think the US is descending into Fascism. For my part, I am not so certain. Here is my opinion on what is going on:
A struggle is going on not just in the US, but across the globe, between (a) a group that wants to institute an international order, ruled by an elite clique, and (b) a smaller group, which includes the likes of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders and others, who want to preserve the concept of national sovereignty. If you want to call group “a” “Fascist”, then what you said is correct. I shy away from the “Fascist” label myself, because the term is generally applied in my country to any white male over 40, or white female who isn’t ugly.
That said, I do not know what the US is “slipping into”. Because the “Globalist” wing (which, ironically, includes the anarchist group “Antifa”) has control of Academia, the main part of the press, and most propaganda arms in the country, people are continually being inundated with extremely vitriolic incitement against traditional American values, as well as against the enforcers of law and order in this country. This could well lead to widespread civil unrest, even to civil war. Once that point is reached, your guess is as good as mine, who will come out on top.
About “Ezek”, I was referring to a commonly used abbreviation (in Christian circles) for “Ezekiel” (Heb, Yechezkel). As a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyite, you might not be as familiar with Tanakh as religious Jews like Edgar & Co. Ezekiel 38-39 prophesies an “End-Times” (i.e. after the Jews have largely returned from their long exile, which is to say, “now”) attack on Israel by the leader of Turkey and his allies, Iran, Sudan and Libya. Spoiler alert: Israel wins, big-time. This is what I expect to happen in the near future.
@ yamit82:
https://goo.gl/images/2tZK1P
Felix Quigley Said:
6th-century Hebrew Prophet. christians never understood his writings but here is the gist of what he wrote: Weitning in the name of G-d he wrote:
The Exile is the personification of Jewish weakness, defeat, flight, persecution, torture, humiliation, genocide, holocaust, degradation. And because of this, it must – in the eyes of the gentiles – personify the weakness, so to speak, of the G-d of the Jews. To the enemy of the Jew, Jewish defeat is proof of the inability of the G-d of Israel to give His people strength and triumph and glory. Such a G-d is either impotent or non-existent…
Felix Quigley Said:
What Michael wrote :
Not accurate… Most of those advisers are Trump’s appointment and hires with too many Obama holdovers he never replaced with his own people and loyalists. Looks like the Trumpian vision is a cross between Chamberlin pacificism and Rand Paul Libertarianism…. Yet 14 years of war in Iraq and 17+ years of war in Afghanistan has done more to weaken and destroy American than rogue advisers and obstructionist political opposition at home.Those wars have not been funded and America borrowed money (China) to pay for those wars. Debt is the biggest internal threat to America. Impossible to fund major civilian projects as there is no public money for them without raising taxes and if you raise taxes it will reduce economic growth and reduce jobs. The stuff Michael complains about is correctable if there is a political will to do so and rather quickly but there are very systemic problems that are a threat and that is the fascism of MERGER OF CORP. AND GOV INTERESTS…. THAT’S THE CLASSIC DEFINITION OF FASCISM. his other crapola about Ezk 38-39n is mostly fundamentalist christian BS they love their end times dream…. I keep telling his his savior is long dead and ain’t coming back 😛
@ yamit82:
YAMIT82
3 hours before you wrote the above Michael had written
“The bottom line is that the greatest threat to US security is in the US itself — with rebellious presidential advisors, and with an opposition party which is actively seeking to destroy this country and replace it with an international order without borders.”
Either you write in a bubble you think your analysis is so important you can dismiss what Michael wrote.
Much more important that your mountain of dung above.
Do not be so self obsessed. Michael wrote what is by far the most important point.
In fact America is slipping into Fascism but then I proved a long time ago you think fascism started with the Romans. No I do not want to go there again with an incompetent. But at least follow what Michael writes.
@ Michael S:
Who is Ezek and when did he live?
@ Michael S:
Trump never pushed hard for his border wall and left it up to Congress and staff to get it ….He signed 2 omnibus finance bills without funds for wall only some funds for repairs. He Lost the HOUSE because as head of the party he put little effort into supporting and campaigning for House candidates and because he never really explained to the public why a wall and border security are synonymous. His tax cut bill was really a corp tax cut with not much for the middle class and with all the economic positive stats middle-class voters hardly felt any benefits in their pockets.
In the last CR passed by both houses and no money for the wall, he was prepared to sign on until at last moment he received palace revolt by most of his core support and did a sudden 180 and refused to sign unless some money for the wall…. He did that out of fear of his base in revolt. No wall shut down gov so what does he do? He changes topic and deflects from criticism by giving his base what he thought was some red meat in compensation for NO WALL. In his ad hoc Removing Troops From Syria. He was shocked and surprised to learn that instead of being a sop to his base it only inflamed them even more against his moves and raised questions over his competency within his own camp.
@ Laura:
Yup!!
I hear a lot about bold moves the US president should be taking against Middle Eastern leaders. The hard fact is, that he cannot accomplish much when his cabinet ministers refuse to carry out his orders. This may change in the future:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/us/politics/patrick-shanahan-defense-secretary.html
The bottom line is that the greatest threat to US security is in the US itself — with rebellious presidential advisors, and with an opposition party which is actively seeking to destroy this country and replace it with an international order without borders.
Regarding Turkey, there can be little doubt that Erdogan wants to extend Turkish influence into Libya, Sudan, Iran and other places. What few may have noticed, is that these are the very countries mentioned in Ezek. 38-39 as allies of the Turkish leader. Israel should certainly prepare itself to face an assault from them. The US cannot help them, if they do not help themselves.
Trump should have buried the hatchet in erdogan’s head.
Clearly Trump has acted more responsibly and with much greater preparation and forethought than initial reports alleged. He kept his plan secret from his own top advisors, or at any rate some of them. But that may be because he didn’t trust them not to leak the plans prematurely or reign in protest before he was ready to announce it. Being devious and being irresponsible are not always the same thing.
Clearly Trump was following the advice of some analysts who have been monitoring the Syrian situation closely, such as the experts cited by AI Monitor. He propably even consulted with the Kurdish leaders. He is struggling to bring about a ‘deal of the century” in Syria that will result in a settlement that is reasonably fair to everyone, while at the same time giving the U.S. a viable exit strategy. It may or may not work, but it is a reasonable gamble. And it is probably reversible if the Kurds and America’s allies face a real catastrophe at the hands of Erdogan or Assad.