Turks and Kurds: How It Came to This

The Kurdish-Turkish conflict has been a common feature in global news for quite some time. This conflict is extremely complex, with many different layers and details leading up to the state of the present-day conflict. To begin to understand the relationship between the Turkish and Kurdish populations, it is essential to first identify each group’s goals, ideals, and history.

The Kurds are members of an ethnic group that spreads across much of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. There are roughly 30 million people who identify as Kurdish in the Middle East, making them the fourth-largest ethnic group in the region. About 15 million Kurds live in Turkey alone since, much to their dismay, there is no independent nation-state or “Kurdistan” for this group to call their very own. With such a strong desire to be independent of the aforementioned countries where they reside, the Kurds have faced great difficulty in terms of assimilation with respect to cultures, languages, and ideals with which they do not align nor wish to conform. Kurds have therefore been subjected to a great deal of harsh treatment, most notably at the hands of the hands of the Turkish government.

To add to this already evident complexity, for several years the Kurds have played a major role in the battles associated with the notorious Islamic State (IS). Many Kurds have fought alongside the US backed-Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to capture IS strongholds, drive IS out of northeastern Syria, and establish control of the Syrian-Turkish border. The SDF serves as a major fighting force against IS and is comprised of mostly Kurdish militia, in the form of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as well as some Arabs and other ethnic groups.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims he is seeking a 20-mile deep “safe zone” along Turkey’s border with Syria so as to protect the border and resettle Syrian refugees. Yet the Erdogan administration has allowed IS fighters to cross the border into Syria time and time again. Preventing occupation of the border by IS has been primarily a result of the efforts of the SDF. The SDF maintains that it will not backtrack on the progress it has made in terms of fighting IS but that Erdogan’s military offensive now being imposed upon Syria, thanks to the withdrawal of US forces from the SDF, will do just that.

The Turkish state has long identified the Kurds as a threat. From Kurdish uprisings in the 1920s that led to severe restriction of their culture, to the very recently launched military operations against Kurdish-led forces in north-eastern Syria, it is clear that the Turkish government will not tolerate what it deems to be terroristic behavior from the Kurds. A pivotal point in the timeline of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict came in the year 1978, when the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), (an officially listed terrorist organization by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the US, the EU, and more) was established and immediately began its fight for an autonomous Kurdish region within the state of Turkey. The armed conflict between these two groups began just six years later, in 1984, and has since displaced hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners and led to more than 40,000 deaths.

Tensions in the region have of course only increased since the establishment of the IS but the Turkish government still holds that newer groups like the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which emerged as a major ally of the US-led coalition battle against IS, and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the armed wing of the YPG, are branches of the PKK and hence share its mission. This implies that the Turks also view these groups as a threat that must be eliminated given their roots in a terrorist organization.

So why have Turkish forces all of the sudden stormed Kurdish-held areas of Syria just this past week? How is the US involved? And what does this all mean for the future of those involved?

The US government announced its withdrawal of troops from northeast Syria on October 6th. This decision set the wheels in motion for the Turkish offensive against Kurdish-led forces, giving Turkey the go-ahead to invade since the US was backing Syrian Kurds, primarily through the SDF. US-Kurdish relations add another layer of complexity to this whole situation. Years ago, the Obama administration turned to the YPG, Syrian Kurds connected to the PYD and the PKK, specifically in order to fight the IS. In fact, this is how the SDF was first created. Now, the US is turning its back on those who have been a reliable partner for many years, the Kurds. The withdrawal of US troops allowed for the Turkish offensive to take place and hence has now seriously jeopardized the progress that has been made in the region in terms of fighting the IS.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops in Syria was made after a telephone conversation with President Erdogan. It is no secret that Erdogan himself is no fan of protecting the Kurds but there are of course multiple arguments about why Trump made this decision and how the decision will play out. He himself justified the announcement via a tweet in which he vows to “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey,” something which he stated he has done before if the Turkish government did anything he considered to be off-limits. In short, however, it is indisputable that this decision is what allowed for the Turkish offensive to take place.

The conflicts of the Middle East continue to remain of unknown fate. Undoubtedly, thousands of innocent civilians will continue to have their lives put at risk and many families will be left displaced throughout the region. Yet it is impossible to predict what could possibly come next and also obviously rather difficult to say exactly what one event has led to the next. One thing for certain is that there is no end in sight to the Kurdish-Turkish conflict.