Turkey’s Syrian venture is rapidly turning sour from President Erdogan’s point of view. The Turkish advance into northeast Syria is moving slowly, but Turkey’s military options are becoming increasingly limited as the Syrian Army, backed by Russia, moves into Kurdish-held cities and towns that might have been targeted by Turkish forces.

It is unlikely that Mr Erdogan will risk taking on Syrian government troops, even if they are thin on the ground, if this involves quarrelling with Russia. In the seven days since he launched Operation Peace Spring, Turkey has become more diplomatically isolated than Ankara might have envisaged when President Trump appeared to greenlight its attack.

A week later after that implicit okay of Turkey’s offensive, Mr Trump is imposing economic sanctions on Ankara after a wild zig-zag in US policy – bizarre even by Trumpian standards.

Almost the entire world is condemning the Turkish invasion and, having achieved the objective of eliminating the Kurdish statelet of Rojava, Turkey will have great difficulty in making any more gains.

“Now that the Kurds and Damascus have come to an agreement, I do not think that Ankara will dare to open a new front against Assad forces,” writes the highly informed Turkish military commentator Metin Gurcan.

Even token numbers of Syrian troops in cities like Manbij and Kobani close to the Euphrates, and Qamishli and Hasakah close to the Iraqi border, will leave Turkish soldiers and allied Arab militiamen confined to a rectangle of territory between the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal-Abyad, possibly extending 20 miles south to the M4 highway – which is the strategic spine of Rojava. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have avoided costly engagements, but could become more of a threat if backed by Syrian army artillery and tanks.

This is all very different from 18 months ago when the Turkish army and Arab militiamen invaded the Kurdish-populated zone of Afrin north of Aleppo and ethnically cleansed its population.

None of this was particularly secret and bands of al-Qaeda and Isis-linked Arab gunmen, which were under Turkish control, posted videos of themselves persecuting Kurds and looting their houses and shops. Human rights groups confirmed and publicized the abuses of the Turkish-led occupation forces, but this appeared to have little impact on the wider world.

The international media was largely focused on similar atrocities being carried out by the Syrian government in besieged Eastern Ghouta in Damascus and had no time for what was happening in Afrin.

This time round the international media treatment of the present Turkish invasion of northern Syria is very different from the disinterest it showed during Operation Olive Branch in Afrin.

Focus now is on the 160,000 Kurdish refugees fleeing the Turkish advance, publicity is given to the murder of prisoners by the pro-Turkish Arab militiamen, and mention is made of their Isis and al-Qaeda backgrounds.

President Erdogan and Turkey are, for the moment at least, replacing President Bashar al-Assad and his regime as the leading international pariahs.

Mr Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds was so blatant and public that it provoked a wave of sympathy for the Syrian Kurds that they had never enjoyed before.

They were portrayed – with good reason – as the heroic conquerors of ISIS who had been thrown to Turkish and al Qaeda-linked wolves by Mr Trump. In addition, there is an understandable fear that Mr Trump has given Isis a new lease of life just when it was on the verge of expiring.

Suddenly, there are pictures everywhere of ISIS captives fleeing their prisons as their Kurdish guards go to try to stem the Turkish advance. Mr Trump’s suggestion that Turkey, which only a few years ago had tolerated the great influx of foreign ISIS fighters across its borders into the caliphate, would replace the Kurds in suppressing ISIS, provoked general derision and dismay.

In terms of domestic Turkish public opinion, the emphasis is still on Turkish military success, but, from now on, this will bring no political benefits to Mr Erdogan. He must try to operate without allies and is being squeezed by the US and Russia. Turkish troops and their Arab allies are still pushing forward, but Turkey has lost the diplomatic and propaganda wars. In the end, it will have no option but to declare a famous victory and retreat.

counterpunch.org

In a field beside a disused railway station on the plain just south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier, a brigade of Syrian Kurdish soldiers were retraining in order to resist an invasion by the Turkish army. “We acted like a regular army when we were fighting Daesh [Isis],” Rojvan, a veteran Kurdish commander of the YPG (People’s Protection Units), told me. “But now it is we who may be under Turkish air attack and we will have to behave more like guerrillas.”

Rojvan and his men had just returned from fighting Isis for 45 days in their last strongholds in eastern Syria. I had met him first in a cemetery in the Kurdish capital Qamishli where he was burying one of his men who had been killed by an Isis rocket when driving a bulldozer to build field fortifications in the middle of a battle.

But now he and his men were learning new tactics to combat the Turkish military units that were beginning to mass on the Turkish side of the border.

Rojvan was a very experienced soldier and not given to false optimism, saying: “We are mainly armed with light weapons like the Kalashnikov and the RPG [rocket propelled grenade] launcher and light machine guns, but we will be resisting tanks and aircraft.”

Rojvan was speaking 18 months ago after the Turkish army and its Syrian Arab allies had invaded the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, forced most of its inhabitants to flee, and was preparing to replace them with Arab settlers.

What happened then may have been a preview of what we are about to see repeated on a much wider scale in northeast Syria after President Trump’s incoherent announcement that the US would not stand in the way of a Turkish invasion.

He has rowed back a little on this in the face of a deluge of criticism, but his basic message – that the US wants out, and does not object to the Turks coming in – has developed its own momentum and will be difficult to stop at this stage.

We are already on the downslope leading to the ethnic cleansing of up to 2 million Kurds in the vast triangle of land which the Kurds call Rojava in northeast Syria. Much of the Kurdish population lives in cities and towns like Qamishli, Kobani and Tal Abyad just south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. They are unlikely to wait to see what a Turkish occupation, backed by bands of Syrian Arab paramilitaries with links to al-Qaeda type groups, is like.

Trump’s support for America’s Kurdish allies was always rickety, but the brazenness of the final betrayal is still breathtaking. All the credit for defeating Isis is given to US forces under Trump’s wise leadership, while in reality the US role was almost entirely confined to airstrikes and artillery fire.

Speaking of the Kurdish role as the military core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the crucial battle for the Isis capital Raqqa, Brett McGurk, the former presidential envoy to the anti-Isis coalition, says on Twitter: “The SDF suffered thousands of casualties in the Raqqa battle. Not a single American life was lost.” Overall, 11,000 Syrian Kurds were killed fighting Isis over the last five years.

McGurk denies that the Kurds ever received lavish supplies of military hardware from the US: “The weapons provided were meagre and just enough for the battle against Isis. (The SDF cleared IEDs by purchasing flocks of sheep.)”

Since 2015 I have been visiting Rojava watching the YPG soldiers advance west and south and always wondering what would happen when Isis was defeated and the US did not need them anymore. The Kurds, who are no political neophytes, wondered the same thing, but there was little they could do to change the direction of events, except hope that the US would not entirely let them down.

It seems that, in the event, their most pessimistic assumptions are being fulfilled, though – such is the nature of the Trump White House – the extent of American betrayal is unclear.

The most important feature by far of the US military presence in Syria is airpower and not the small number of troops on the ground. Will the US maintain an air umbrella over Rojava and, if so, does this mean that the Turks will not be able to deploy their air force against the YPG? If this is indeed the case, it would give the 25,000 battle-hardened YPG troops more of a military option, though, even so, their chances of long-term success are limited.

It is unclear how far the Turks will advance: their attack could at first be in a limited area between the towns of Tal-Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. But the White House statement spoke of Turkey taking responsibility for Isis prisoners, most of whom are in a camp at al-Hol that is deep inside Rojava, close to the Iraqi border. Taking over this would mean the Turks seizing much of northeast Syria.

Do the Kurds have any political options? The only obvious one – supposing the Kurdish alliance with the US to be a broken reed – is to look to President Bashar al-Assad and to Russia. The Kurds do not like the Syrian government, which persecuted and marginalised them for years before 2011, but they do prefer them to Turkish control and probable expulsion.

The problem here is that the Kurds may have left it too late. So long as they were allied to the US, they could not seriously negotiate with Damascus. Now they appear to have the worst of all possible worlds: neither Washington nor Moscow nor Damascus is going to protect them.

But the options were never quite as simple as that: the Syrian army has never been strong enough to fight Turkey. Presidents Putin and Assad do not want a Turkish invasion but they will also be glad to see the back of the American forces.

The de facto Kurdish state of Rojava could swiftly disintegrate under the impact of a Turkish incursion. A scramble for its territory is already beginning: Syrian and Turkish army units are reportedly racing each other to take over the Arab city of Manbij just west of the Euphrates that has been under effective Kurdish control. A new chaotic phase in the Syrian war is beginning.

counterpunch.org

It may turn out to be Syria’s Kurds (who number about two million) who will face the most dramatic consequences of the president’s decision, for it was they who created the de facto autonomous state of Rojava in northeastern Syria with the Americans’ support. Now Rojava’s very existence is under threat.

Ankara has already stated that it has not given up on its plan for “an offensive against the terrorists” in eastern Syria, but has merely put it on hold for a while (i.e., until the Americans have left). Officially, this has been prompted by the fact that Turkey intends to take over for the US and finish off the remnants of the “Islamic State” (IS) — something over which Trump and Erdoğan have supposedly already reached an explicit agreement. The leader in the White House has already tweeted that this is so. Turkey’s foreign affairs minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, issued the same confirmation on Dec. 21. If left to its own devices, the Syrian government army could handle a few stray IS units even without the Turks, but Ankara isn’t particularly interested in IS. Turkey needs to wipe Rojava off the map. 

According to Çavuşoğlu, the vacuum that will be left after the US troops pull out “can be filled by terrorist organizations,” so Turkey is ready to exert control over those territories (which, as a reminder, are Syrian).

Faced with the dilemma over whether to favor as an ally the mythical state of Rojava or Turkey, the leader in the White House did not hesitate to choose the latter. Although the American troops are slated to leave Syria within 60 to 100 days, the State Department advisors who are helping to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure in northeastern Syria are being pulled out within a matter of days. Brett McGurk, the chief advisor and special presidential envoy in Syria — a man whom the Kurds practically viewed as the architect of their statehood — is openly irate. McGurk, who saw himself as a new version of Lawrence of Arabia, accused the White House of “abandoning the US allies in the region.” However, he himself bears much of the responsibility for the chaos there. It was none other than McGurk who was the primary author of the new Iraqi constitution that plunged that country into the abyss of civil war. And he also wooed the Syrian Kurds on behalf of the US, by dangling promises of their own statehood, which never materialized.

The command of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces has already issued a statement condemning the US decision and proclaiming its determination to continue the fight. Kurdish leaders are less concerned with the Americans’ departure than with the deal the Americans reached with the Turks behind the Kurds’ backs. Their statement calls out Turkey’s intentions to take aggressive action against Rojava, in addition to Ankara’s “dirty plans and games.” The Kurds feel that by simultaneously announcing both the withdrawal of their troops as well as the sale of the Patriot missile-defense system to Turkey, the US has green-lighted the plans for a “Turkish occupation” of their territory. However, for some reason they are requesting protection from the UN, although Rojava is legally within the borders of the Syrian state and thus that kind of conversation needs to be held with Damascus.

What awaits Rojava? The only thing that can save it would be the recognition of the sovereignty of Damascus within its borders. If Syrian government troops enter Rojava, the Turks will not risk seriously damaging their relationship with Russia in order to launch an offensive. Nor do they even need northeastern Syria, as they only need assurances that there will be no further moves to create a Kurdish quasi-state and thus no threats to Turkey’s stability. Damascus and Moscow are ready to provide this. Russian representatives have always expressed their readiness to work with Damascus in order to safeguard the national rights of the Syrian Kurds in a mutually acceptable way. If the Kurds had been willing to move in this direction earlier, their negotiations with the Syrian government could have been conducted in a more favorable atmosphere. But better late than never. If the leaders in Rojava don’t find a way to reach a compromise with Damascus, the Syrian Kurds could be looking at a real calamity.

We had wrongly predicted that Turkish threats against the Kurdish held north-west area of Afrin were empty:

The threat is not serious:

• Afrin is under formal protection of Russian and Syrian forces.
   
• The real danger to Turkey is not Afrin but the much larger Kurdish protectorate the U.S. publicly announced in north-east Syria.

The Turkish threats and its artillery noise have led to counter noise from Syria and more silent advice from Russia. The Syrian government wants to show that it is the protector of all Syrian citizens be they ethnic Arabs or Kurds. Russia is proud of its role as the grown up who is calming down all sides.

Turkey is now attacking the Afrin canton in full force. With help from one George Orwell the operation was dubbed "Olive Branch"

The Turkish operation to go after Afrin was triggered by two events. The more important one was the U.S. announcement of a permanent occupation of north-east Syria with the help of a 30,000 men strong SDF "border protection force" consisting of mainly Kurds and some Arabs who earlier fought under ISIS. We had noted at that time:

The Turks were not consulted before the U.S. move and are of course not amused that a "terrorist gang", trained and armed by the U.S., will control a long stretch of their southern border. Any Turkish government would have to take harsh measures to prevent such a strategic threat to the country.

The U.S. move was amateurish. It ignored the security needs of its NATO ally Turkey in exchange for an illegal and unsustainable occupation of north-east Syria. Secretary of State Tillerson tried to calm the Turks by claiming that the "border protection force" was not for border protection. Reports from the training ground expose that as a lie:

"This force will be a foundational force to protect the borders of north Syria," proclaimed the announcer at the graduation ceremony.

A second motive for the Turkish operation was the success of the Syrian army in the east-Idleb where "Free Syrian Army" and al-Qaeda Takfiris supported by Turkey were eliminated by Syrian Army attacks.

The now unfolding Turkish operation was preceded by several rounds of negotiations.

The Syrian government and its Russian allies offered the Afrin Kurds to protect them from any Turkish attacks:

Nearly a week ago, [a] meeting between Russian officials and Kurdish leaders took place. Moscow suggested Syrian State becomes only entity in charge of the northern border. The Kurds refused. It was immediately after that that the Turkish Generals were invited to Moscow. Having the Syrian State in control of its Northern Border wasn't the only Russian demand. The other was that the Kurds hand back the oil fields in Deir al Zor. The Kurds refused suggesting that the US won't allow that anyway. The meeting was not exactly a success.

This account was confirmed by Kurdish negotiators:

Aldar Xelil (@Xelilaldar), member of the Democratic Free Society Tev-Dem: “In a meeting Russia proposed to the Afrin Administration that if Afrin is ruled by the Syrian regime, Turkey won’t attack it. #Afrin Canton Administration refused this proposal.”

The Kurds made a counteroffer. They would raise some Syrian flags and give up on the (mostly destroyed) Menagh air force base they hold but they were unwilling to give up any border control:

A translation from the Diken newspaper:

Amberin Zaman talked to Rojava officials Nobahar Mustafa and Sinam Mohammed. They say:

• Russia aims to weaken the YPG and to turn Afrin over to "the regime."

• We're still in negotiations with Russia. They said if you turn over Afrin to the regime it will protect you. We refused. We offered to turn over Menagh airbase and some other checkpoints but they refused.

• We may pull out of Sochi

• New alliances will be formed with Saudi, UAE, and Egypt.

• Rojava forces commander General Mazlum and Ilham Ahmed have met Brett McGurk to ask the US to stop the Turkish attacks. This is a test of how reliable an ally the US is.

After the negotiations with the Kurds had failed Syria and Russia, which was the negotiating entity, made a deal with Turkey. Turkey had agreed to a de-escalation zone in Idleb but never proceeded to set up the promised observation posts in the al-Qaeda ruled area. Turkey had supported al-Qaeda. Fighting it directly is against Turkish interests. It is itself too vulnerable as many al-Qaeda fighters have family and friends living within Turkey.

The new deal will give Syria control over most of Idleb in exchange for Turkish control over Afrin (if the Turks can indeed take the area). In parallel to the start of the Turkish operation the Syrian army took the air base Abu Duhur in east-Idleb. It will eliminate whatever is left of al-Qaeda and ISIS in the now closed cauldron. It will then proceed further into Idelb governorate.

The Syrian government has rejected Turkish claims that it was informed about the attack and officially condemned the Turkish move. But it can do little against it. Its army is depleted and engaged elsewhere. Neither Russia nor Iran would support an open conflict with Turkey.

Turkish media are in full war mode:

Turkish papers this morning:

• Hurriyet: Our jets hit #Afrin. Turkey’s heart beats as one

• Sabah: We hit them in their den

• Haberturk: Iron fist to terror, olive branch to civilians

• Sozcu: We said we would strike despite the US and Russia. We struck the traitors

Turkey has launched a quite large operation against Afrin. Its air-force is bombarding the area. It is now sending its most modern tanks. The al-Qaeda-"Free Syrian Army" Turkey supports and controls will be its front line infantry that is sure to bleed the most. Afrin is mountainous and it will be a difficult fight. Two Turkish tanks have already been destroyed. The Kurds are well prepared and armed. Both sides will have lots of losses.

Meanwhile the Syrian army and its allies will have time to take over Idelb.

The U.S. is left with a mess. Its strategy for Syria, only announced last week, is already falling apart. Its Central Command rejected any responsibility for the Kurds in Afrin while allying with the Kurds in the east. These are the same people. The Kurdish military commander in Afrin earlier fought in Kobane. Now Turkish planes are taking off from the U.S. build Incerlik air base to bomb the Kurds in the Syrian west while U.S. tanker planes take off from Incirlik to support the U.S. alliance with the Kurds in the east.

The Arab group Jaysh al Thuwar was part of the Arab fig leaf that disguises the Kurdish command over the U.S. supported SDF in the east. It has now turned sides and is back under Turkish tutelage. (UPDATE: This has now been denied. /end-update)  More elements of the SDF will change sides. We can expect "insider attacks" against the U.S. forces who are training them.

The Kurdish command blames Russia for the Turkish attack on Afrin. That is laughable. Syria and the Russians had supported the Kurds throughout the war. They were the first to deliver weapons and ammunition to the Kurds for the fight against the Takfiris. It were the Kurds that changed sides and invited the U.S. occupation. It is the Kurds that announced they would ask for Saudi support.

Just a few month ago the Kurdish project in Iraq failed miserably. The Iraqi government took back all gains the Kurds had made over a decade and the U.S. did nothing to help their Kurdish "allies". Why do the Kurds in Syria believe that their immense overreach will have a different outcome?

moonofalabama.org

The recent Turkish air strikes on Kurdish positions in north-eastern Syria killed at least 28 members of the YPG (People’s Protection Units), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), and wounded 18 others.

Since then there have been regular clashes between the YPG and Turkish forces in several areas in northern Syria. The operations against the YPG were not coordinated with the US-led coalition, to which the Turkish military gave only 52 minutes’ notice to get its forces out of harm’s way.

Turkey’s unilateral move provoked deep anger among Pentagon officials and prompted the US military to increase its deployment in an unprecedented show of solidarity with the YPG. In a bid to deter Turkey from carrying out further attacks against its Syrian Kurdish ally, the US also deployed special forces along the Turkey-Syrian border.

Turkey could be putting its ties with the United States at risk by targeting the Syrian YPG, which it considers a terrorist organization because of its links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has been waging a bloody insurgency inside Turkey since the mid-1980s. But the Turkish authorities need to seriously consider whether the YPG is a real threat to the country or if it is merely portrayed as such by ultraconservative nationalist Turks.

The PYD/YPG’s alleged closeness to the PKK is not the only reason Turkey has been attacking its forces inside Syrian territory. Its shadowy relations with the Syrian regime, Russia and the United States mean that the PYD is perceived as a “pawn” by the Turkish state.

Turkey is ignoring the fact that the YPG’s aggressive operations against Islamic State have earned it the respect of the international community and galvanized its relationship with the United States. This will make Turkey’s strategy to weaken the YPG very costly unless the US changes its stance on the insurgent group.

Turkey must understand that the United States relies on the Kurdish YPG to fight against IS in Syria. This wasn’t America’s first choice. Its preferred partner was the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a coalition of Arab forces that Turkey also supported. However, the FSA was ineffective, riven by infighting, and at times elements within it were allied with extremists. Turkey, meanwhile, was reluctant to deploy ground forces. The United States finally turned to the Kurds only when it had no other options.

Ilham Ahmed, co-president of the PYD, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post: “Turkey claims that the YPG is the same as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is currently fighting the government inside Turkey. This claim is based on the fact that we share a founder and many intellectual values with the PKK, but this is equally true of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a legal political party in Turkey with 58 members in the Turkish parliament. They are no more PKK than we are, and any attempt to equate us with the PKK is disingenuous.”

The YPG was formed by the PYD and not the PKK. The PYD has ex-PKK members, but so does the peshmerga and other groups. In Rojava there are individual PKK fighters who come to fight IS, just like there are foreign fighters from elsewhere. Unlike foreign fighters who join the YPG, PKK fighters often remain separate from the YPG. It should also be noted that there are restrictions on what PKK fighters can do in Rojava.

The YPG and PKK are truly separate. The PKK and the PYD/YPG are ideologically distinct, although there are some similarities. Moreover, the recent rise in violence inside Turkey perpetrated by Kurdish insurgents is a direct result of the failure of the Turkey-PKK peace process, which started in 2013 and broke down during the summer of 2015.

Turkey must examine the Kurdish problem at a grassroots level to find a way to resolve the conflict. It needs to engage with the PKK through peace talks and stop attacking Syrian Kurdish militias that do not pose a direct threat to it.

Ankara’s only long-term solution is to achieve peace with the Kurds. After all, they aren’t going anywhere. The good news for Turkey is that the Kurds are the easiest people in the entire Middle East to make friends with. The Americans have managed to do so almost effortlessly. So have the Israelis.

The PKK may be intransigent, but if reasonable Kurdish grievances were addressed, including Turkey’s hostility toward besieged Kurds in Syria, then support for the PKK in Turkey would likely evaporate.

atimes.com

The Pentagon, under Obama, drew up a plan for a worldwide network of military «hubs» with smaller dependent bases or «spokes» coordinating their activity with the hubs. One such hub is a large airbase being constructed by the United States in Erbil, in what is the all-but-declared independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

In February 2015, the Peshmerga Ministry in Kurdistan, the aspirant nation’s de facto defense ministry, confirmed the establishment of the US base even as the Pentagon was denying it. The establishment of a US military base in a Kurdistan that is still recognized by the international community as a part of Iraq is a touchy subject for the Pentagon and Obama administration. The US has already gone down the slippery slope of establishing US bases in self-declared independent countries that are not recognized by the United Nations. For example, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, which remains unrecognized by Serbia, from which it was carved; Russia; China; Hungary; and Spain, is one of the largest US bases in Europe.

Recently, it became clearer what «spoke» bases would be built in the Middle East that would coordinate their activities with the US Central Command installation in Erbil. Taking advantage of the battlefield success of the Syrian Kurds, the US built an airbase in Rmeilan, which is now part of the embryonic Syrian Kurdish state known as the Federation of Northern Syria – Rojava. The Rmeilan base is designed as one of the spokes from the Erbil hub. The United States justifies its military bases in the largely unrecognized Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) territory and Northern Syria-Rojava by claiming the bases are needed to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an organization of America’s making. However, anyone in the Middle East with common sense realizes that the new bases are to create zones of protection for US oil interests who want to exploit the oil reserves of both Iraq and Syria.

In a show of hypocrisy, the Pentagon maintains that it coordinated the establishment of the Erbil base with the Iraqi government in Baghdad. Yet, when it came to modernizing the 2600-meter-long runway at Rmeilan in northern Syria, it sought no permission from the central government of Syria in Baghdad. And many Iraqi officials scoff at the notion Washington asked Baghdad for prior permission to build its base in Erbil.

Another spoke for the Erbil hub is the not-so-secret US training base located in the northern Jordanian desert town of Safawi. At this base, US, Jordanian, British, French, and Turkish troops jointly trained Syrian rebel forces, many of which, when entering Syria, immediately defected to ISIL and its affiliates. Jordan’s King Abdullah, at a January 2016 meeting in Washington with congressional officials, bemoaned the fact that Turkey was aiding ISIL in Syria and that Jordanian Special Forces units were required to enter Syria to clean up the mess caused by the Turks. Obama, who continues to maintain his friendship with Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, canceled his previously scheduled meeting at the White House with Abdullah.

The Obama administration has had no desire to expose Erdogan as a supporter of ISIL, primarily because Washington wants to maintain its large airbase at Incirlik. Again, the maintenance of bases by the United States trumps all other concerns, diplomatic and even counter-terrorism issues included.

The United States Navy has long coveted the strategic Yemeni island of Socotra. Once part of the British Empire and more recently part of South Yemen, which permitted the Soviet Union to establish a key signals intelligence base on the island that sits right in the middle of the Gulf of Aden and the maritime routes through the Red Sea, Socotra is considered the crown jewel for any global empire. In February of this year, Yemen’s Saudi-supported puppet president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi reportedly offered the United Arab Emirates a 99-year lease for the control of Socotra. The UAE capital of Abu Dhabi is the headquarters for Reflex Reponses (R2), the private military company established by Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, a company that provided services to the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department during the American military fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Currently, US civilian paramilitary advisers command R2 mercenary units made up of Colombians, South Africans, and Chileans. These may be the first ground forces in Socotra to prepare the island for an American military presence.

Any agreement by the UAE to gain control of Socotra for 99-years, which suspiciously reminds one of the US 99-year lease on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a lease long since expired, would also open the island up to the problems usually associated with hosting American military bases. Aside from the people of Socotra suffering under a joint UAE-US suzerainty, at risk will be the island’s protected world natural heritage site status. One thing that is always certain after the US leaves a military base, which is rare, are the mounds of trash and toxic chemicals it leaves behind. Pristine Socotra could become a toxic waste dump while serving as a virtual American aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Aden.

From the deserts of the Middle East, the Pentagon is also refurbishing the largely abandoned NATO base at Keflavik in Iceland. The US Navy plans to station P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft in Keflavik to counter what NATO sees as a Russian threat. However, it is NATO that is expanding bases and building new ones, including American military personnel, in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In Asia, the United States is trying to convince the government of Okinawa to allow it to build a new air base on the Japanese island. However, Okinawa’s government, tired of animalistic US servicemen preying, for decades, on the girls and women of Okinawa, wants the US out – period. If they ever so unfortunate to host a US military base, the people of Socotra only need to ask the Okinawans what American troops bring to an island culture in the way of rapes, assaults, alcohol, sexually-transmitted diseases, drugs, theft, and pollution.

Other islands in the Indian Ocean are also not safe from being exploited by the Pentagon’s foreign base frenzy. The residents of the Cocos Islands, an Australian possession in the Indian Ocean located 2750 kilometers northwest of Perth, are concerned their pristine tropical corner of the planet will soon host a major military base, part of Obama’s «Pivot to Asia», which is directed against China. Eager to challenge China in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, the Pentagon is busy establishing new bases in Darwin, Australia; Singapore; and the Philippines, while maintaining its large base on Diego Garcia, an island ruthlessly stolen from the native Chagossians in order to make way for American nuclear submarines, cruise missiles, and B-52s.

The only good news about one new US base at Ice Camp Sargo in the Arctic is that it is located on an ice sheet. It will eventually be abandoned as the polar ice melts this summer.

The news came at the end of a two-day meeting in the northeastern Syrian town of Rmeilan organized by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the dominant political party in the Kurdish areas of Syria. Officials said at a news conference they intended to begin preparations for a federal system, including electing a joint leadership and a 31-member organizing committee that would prepare a «legal and political vision» for the system within six months. The Kurds represent about 15 percent of Syria's population.

The federalism declaration is not intended to detach the northeastern Kurdish region from Syria, only to bring a measure of self-rule. Representatives of the Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian communities and other ethnic groups participated in the conference and commonly decided to bring the three Kurdish-led autonomous areas (Jazira, Kobani and Afrin) under the umbrella of one federal region called Rojava. According to the statement released after the conference, the federal region will be a part of Syria and an autonomous state.

PYD leader Saleh Muslim said, it is impossible to «go back to the old Syria. It is something to be changed. Any kind of centralized Syria is unacceptable».

Aided by US material support and air strikes, they are seen as a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State, but the Kurds of Syria have been frustrated, as their victories on the battlefield have not translated into political gains. Shut out of UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva, they have chosen to go it alone.

At present, Syrian Kurds effectively control an uninterrupted stretch of 400 km (250 miles) along the Syrian-Turkish border from the Euphrates River to the frontier with Iraq. They also hold a separate section of the northwestern border in the Afrin area. The areas are separated by roughly 100 km (60 miles) of territory, much of it still held by the Islamic State.

The move is likely to further complicate peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending Syria’s war. It’s mainly Ankara’s fault – Kurdish groups in Syria were excluded from the United Nations-brokered peace talks and ceasefire under pressure from Turkey. The Turkish government sees the Syrian party as a terrorist group which co-operates with the PKK (the Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party) and threatens Ankara equally as the Islamic State (IS). However, the rest of the international community doesn’t see the PYD as a terrorist group. The United Nations Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, who has convened the peace talks in Geneva, suggested last week that a federal model for Syria could be discussed during negotiations.

«All Syrians have rejected division (of Syria) and federalism can be discussed at the negotiations», he told Al Jazeera television.

«The second round of inter-Syrian talks is underway in Geneva, but Syrian Kurds were not invited. It means that the future of Syria and its society is decided without Kurds. In fact, we are pushed back into a conservative, old-fashioned system which does not fit well with us», said Rodi Osman, the head of Syrian Kurdistan office in Moscow.

According to him, «In light of this, we see only one solution which is to declare the creation of [Kurdish] federation. It will serve the interests of the Kurds, but also those of Arabs, Turks, Assyrians, Chechens and Turkomans – all parts of Syria's multinational society».

«Given the complicated situation in Syria, we would become an example of a system that may resolve the Syrian crisis», Osman added.

The declaration defied warnings from Turkey, the Syrian government, the Syrian armed opposition and the United States that any such move risks further destabilizing the situation.

Turkey, which is at war with its own Kurdish minority and has attacked Kurdish rebels in Iraq and Syria, is wary of growing Kurdish power across the Syrian border and has long insisted that the Kurds be sidelined.

«Unilateral moves carry no validity», the Turkish foreign ministry said, in a terse statement.

Ankara sees the PYD party is an offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara is currently battling in southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and Iraq. If the Federal System of Northern Syria goes ahead, it is likely to set off alarm bells in Ankara.

Turkey has warned that a Kurdish takeover of the Azaz area would be a «red line», and it has also repeatedly said that it will not tolerate any push for autonomy by the Kurds of northern Syria, whose territories border those of Turkey’s own restive Kurds. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has warned repeatedly that Ankara would not tolerate the establishment of Kurdish self-rule in Syria and would send his army across the border to prevent it. A Turkish official told Reuters: «Syria must remain as one without being weakened and the Syrian people must decide on its future in agreement and with a constitution. Every unilateral initiative will harm Syria’s unity».

Damascus has rejected the federation project citing the necessity to preserve Syria's territorial integrity and independence. «Here we speak of how to preserve the unity of Syria and its independence and territorial integrity», said Bashar January, the head of the Syrian delegation at the Geneva talks.

«Drawing any lines between Syrians would be a great mistake», he added, stressing that the Syrian Kurds were an important part of the Syrian people. In a strongly worded statement, Syria’s government also warned that it would regard as «terrorists» any party that attempted «to undermine the territorial integrity of Syria and the unity of its people», according to the official Syrian news agency SANA.

«That includes those who gathered in Rmeilan», SANA added.

The main Western-backed opposition alliance, the National Coalition, meanwhile warned against «any attempt to form entities, regions, or administrations that usurp the will of the people».

Washington, which supported Rojava in its battle against the Islamic State, also said that it would not recognize the new federation. «We don't support self-ruled, semiautonomous zones inside Syria», said State Department spokesman John Kirby. «Whole, unified, nonsectarian Syria – that's the goal».

Sounds strange against the background of Washington’s support of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in neighboring Iraq. But the KRG enjoys good relationship with Turkey, perhaps that’s what explains this duplicitous approach.

Russia has not rejected the establishment of a federal system in Syria as an option for finding a solution to the crisis. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on March 14 following talks with his Tunisian counterpart Khemaies Jhinaoui that Moscow is ready to support any agreement on Syria’s state system to be reached between the government and all the opposition groups. «Only the Syrian people will decide Syria’s destiny. This means that any form of government, whatever it is called – federalization, a unitary state, should be the subject of an agreement between all Syrians», Lavrov said.

The Minister added that this position follows from the agreements of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) that have been approved by the UN Security Council.

Russia firmly supports the Kurdish participation in the Geneva talks. «If the Kurds are ‘thrown out’ of the negotiations on Syria’s future, how can you expect them to want to remain within this state?» Sergey Lavrov asked on March 13 in an interview with Russian REN TV channel.

Expressing his strictly personal point of view, Russian expert Semyon Bagdasarov, the Director of the Center for the Middle East and Central Asian Studies, supported the idea of Syria’s federalization.

According to him, federalization with defense and external policy left in the hands of Damascus is the best way to preserve Syria as a single state with its multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. He referred to the United Arab Emirates as an example.

The opinions may differ, but some things are evident and certain facts are indisputable. Turkey is responsible for keeping Syrian Kurds out of the UN-brokered negotiation process to provoke unilateral actions on their part. The Turkish government has ignored the opinion of the world community, the UN and all major actors involved in the crisis management process, including Russia and the United States. Turkey has already attacked the Kurdish positions. It has threatened to cross the border and start a war on the ground. Ankara may say it does not fight Syria, but a hostile entity – the new Kurdish autonomy, which is supporting subversive activities inside the Turkish territory. This scenario may undermine the whole crisis management effort. 

The creation «Democratic Federal System for Rojava-Northern Syria» should not become a provocation. It’s just a new reality to be included into the agenda of peace talks in Geneva. To do it, Syrian Kurds must be a party to the talks. This is the time to rectify the mistake, stand up to Turkey’s pressure and clear the way for peace process. All Syrians, including the Kurds, have a right to be parties to the UN-brokered talks. 

Ankara used to conduct an ersatz «peace process» with Anatolian Kurds. Erdogan replaced it by all-out war, spilled over against Syrian Kurds. The war is not against all Kurds, of course, but mostly those of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK, whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, is serving a life sentence at Imrali prison) and their allies, the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Anything Ankara spins about its commitment to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh across «Syraq» is fake; the only true commitment from Erdogan and his hegemonic AKP machine is to smash the PYD and its weaponized arm, the YPG. There could not be a «worse» example for Anatolian Kurds than the advent of Kurdish self-rule through a canton system in neighboring Rojava (northern Syria).

So the whole drama developing across the Turkey-Syria border is subjected to a categorical imperative endlessly reiterated by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu; if the YPG advances west of the Euphrates to unite the three Kurdish cantons, it’s war.

Well, war it is, already, for quite a while, all that washed out by the proverbial tsunami of lies, as in Erdogan and Davutoglu trying to blame the latest bomb attack in Ankara on the YPG (the perpetrators were actually a splinter group formerly affiliated with the PKK). Add to the lying record false flag attempts (Erdogan’s wish, back in 2014, to justify a NATO invasion) and cowardly ambushing (the victim was the Russian Su-24 on the Turkish-Syrian border last November.)

As much as Erdogan’s Syrian Kurd «policy» may be a UFO, that boils down, essentially, to preventing the YPG by all means to advance west of the Euphrates and finally unite the three Kurdish cantons; and eventually to smash them for good (after all, Ankara branded the YPG «terrorists»). The stark fact that the government in Damascus is not at war with the YPG and is not exactly worried about the Syrian Kurdish cantons does not deter The Sultan from his war paranoia mood.

Autocratic Erdogan is apoplectic against what is, for all practical purposes, the Rojava’s democratic autonomy experiment, a process started in July 2012 and inspired by – you guessed it – Ocalan himself. Last year, in summer, Turkish Kurds saw the light and went all-out for democratic autonomy in many an Anatolian town. The – predictable – result was Ankara at war, again, against the PKK.

It’s all about Erdogan vs Ocalan.

It’s fair to argue that Rojava – and not Russia – is Erdogan’s ultimate nightmare. Because the democratic autonomy perfected by Rojava sprung up from theoretical texts penned by Erdogan’s prime nemesis, Ocalan.

Kurds across the board have enthusiastically adopted the concept; the PYD, the Kurdistan Party of Free Life (PJAK) in Iran and the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK) in Iraqi Kurdistan. Nobody is talking about «splittism» – as Beijing would describe it (referring to Tibet). Rojava, for instance, may remain inside the Syrian state, but enjoying full self-determination.

So here’s to the name of the real game: Erdogan vs Ocalan. And not Erdogan vs Putin.

If only Erdogan and the hegemonic AKP machine would have a trans-ethnic inclusionary process to offer. Not only they don’t, but on top of it they support all manner of unsavory Salafi-jihadi outfits, and even ISIS/ISIL/Daesh itself, in their mad rage to topple Damascus and turn an Islamist Syria into a vassal state.

What remains, inevitably, is the Sultan’s monolithic war logic; stop the YPG on its tracks while allowing the Jihadi Highway to go on undisturbed, even after the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) cut off the Aleppo-Kilis corridor.

Team Obama’s «strategy» for its part – true to American tradition – remains to endlessly manipulate Kurds for Washington’s geopolitical ends. That translates into encouraging the YPG and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga to invest in a very problematic offensive against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh simultaneously in Raqqa and Mosul.

The Kurds can’t do it by themselves, in both cases, and the possibility of holding the fort afterwards is also slim. Welcome to «leading from behind», that’s how it works. And Team Obama’s geopolitical cowardice explodes through the roof with the added component of Washington never, in practice, defending the Kurds against Erdogan’s madness (after all he’s a «NATO ally»), while proclaiming out loud that the YPG cannot conquer territory in the hands of the Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria «moderate rebels».

So Erdogan’s «strategy» – in gleaming tatters all across the Syrian theatre of war – now boils down to trying to keep away from the YPG as much of that 98 km stretch across the border as possible; essentially «transferring» that land from an enfeebled ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to US-supported Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham. Translation: The Sultan replaces his favors, taking from the fake «Caliphate» to give to al-Qaeda, as long as he can stick it to the Kurds.

It’s easy to visualize Syrian Kurd frustration under these circumstances. They may find a way out by ditching, for the moment, the dream of uniting the cantons, to instead coordinate an offensive linking up with the SAA in Aleppo. Erdogan is coward enough not to risk going head to head against a battle-hardened Syrian army fully supported by the Russian Air Force.

Additionally, the PYD/YPG may buy some time analyzing the real extent of Washington’s betrayal. Assuming that might eventually transform itself into increased US-facilitated weaponizing in the medium term, the YPG may even contemplate not totally destroying the al-Nusra nebulae for now – and go for it with a vengeance after helping to polish off Aleppo’s environs.

With an extra, irresistible bonus: new weapons boosting the Sultan’s recurrent nightmare to unbearable proportions, while keeping the dream of democratic autonomy very much alive.

The complicated situation in Syria arises from a totally failed American foreign policy in the Middle East that was more intent on overthrowing stable governments, like those of Syria and Libya, than on preserving the relatively peaceful status quo ante. This utter failure of America’s Middle East policy can be laid directly at the doorstep of former Secretary of State and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, whose «Responsibility to Protect» (R2P) program resulted in the mass slaughter of Syrians, including Kurds, Alawites, Shias, Armenian and Assyrian Christians, moderate Sunnis, Yazidis, and Druze, at the hands of ISIL and affiliated jihadist terrorists.

Turkey’s virtual declaration of war against Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) forces is a direct assault on not only the US and Russian-supported Syrian Kurds but also on the YPG’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies consisting of Sunni Arab, Turkmen, Yazidi, and Assyrian units. The YPG and SDF alliance has achieved pivotal battlefield success against the Turkish- and Saudi-supported ISIL forces and their radical jihadist allies. SDF and YPG victories include the capture of the strategic town of Tal Rifaat, just north of Aleppo. In fact, SDF and YPG forces are, in cooperation with the army of the Syrian Arab Republic, closing in on Aleppo, which was seized by ISIL and its dubious allies, the US-, Turkish- and Saudi-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA). Ever since its creation, the FSA has maintained links to jihadist rebels in Syria, including ISIL and the al-Nusra Front. The Obama administration has falsely claimed that the FSA is composed of the democratic opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, an examination of the FSA and its tentacles reveals significant links to jihadist terrorist mercenaries fighting in Syria’s civil war.

In reaction to the success of the Syrian Kurds and their allies, Turkish forces opened up with artillery fire on Syrian Kurdish positions near the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkey has issued a demarche to the United States: either support its Turkish NATO allies or the Syrian Kurds. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has fashioned, along with the Saudis and Emiratis, a Sunni Legion to battle the Syrian Kurds, Shias, Alawites, and other ethnic and religious minorities, has laid down a gauntlet directed at Washington. The Obama administration’s refusal to order Erdogan and his Saudi and Emirati friends to stand down their massing forces near the Syrian border in Turkey has resulted in further uncertainty throughout the Middle East.

Making matters worse for the Syrian Kurds is the temporary suspension of US air support for the YPG and SDF the minute their forces crossed the Euphrates River, which bisects northern Syria in a north-to-south geographic boundary. Turkey and their Wahhabist allies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are intent on preventing the establishment of an autonomous Rojava Kurdistan state stretching from the Iraqi border, across the Euphrates, to the Mediterranean Sea. There are credible reports that Assad’s government in Damascus has not objected to the creation of such a Kurdish entity as long as the Kurds continue to achieve battlefield successes against the jihadist Sunni rebel forces.

Turkey has carried out false flag terrorist attacks in Ankara against innocent civilians, as well as Turkish military personnel. The first false flag attack last October, a twin bombing at Ankara’s central railway station that killed 102 people, was initially blamed on the Turkish-supported ISIL, but later blamed on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Another Ankara suicide car bombing this month that targeted military buses stopped at a traffic light, killing some 28 people, was blamed, in part, on a YPG «terrorist». Turkey cynically used the bus attack to carry out air strikes against YPG positions in Syria. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu also conveniently used the attack to call on the United States and other nations to cease their support for the YPG, calling it a «terrorist» organization. US diplomats, off-the-record, confided that Turkey was lying about the YPG, emphasizing that the US had absolutely zero proof of YPG involvement in the bombing of the military buses in Ankara.

It is clear that Turkey will do anything to prevent an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq allying itself with an autonomous Kurdish state in Western Kurdistan, Rojava (“the West”), also known as Syrian Kurdistan. And two Kurdish political entities, one in Iraq and the other in Syria, stand poised to receive wide international recognition with Rojava Kurdistan already opening a diplomatic office in Moscow. Rojava Kurdistan also has plans to open similar offices in Berlin and Paris. Meanwhile, the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil has plans to hold a popular referendum on independence, which would win overwhelming support by Iraqi Kurds. An independent Kurdistan and autonomous Rojava Kurdistan would undoubtedly come to the aid of their long-oppressed kin in eastern Turkey, which Erdogan fears will undermine his regime and his long-term plans for a pan-Turkic «commonwealth» of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Chechnya, Crimean Tatarstan, as well as Turkoman statelets in Syria and Iraq. Erdogan foresees a Turkish empire stretching as far away as China’s Xinjiang-Uighur province and Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Turkey and its new-found Saudi and Emirati friends will continue to support their ISIL and other jihadist surrogates to prevent an independent Kurdish state in Iraq and an affiliated autonomous Kurdish state in Rojava in Syria. General Salim Idris, the Turkish and Central Intelligence Agency public relations flack who once commanded the practically non-existent «Free Syrian Army», falsely accused the YPG of being a tool of the Assad government. Israel, which has patched up frayed relations with Turkey, is relishing the fact that Syria and Iraq will eventually be fragmented, a fruition of the Oded Yinon plan of 1982 that called for the eventual dissolution of string Arab nation states into smaller warring fiefdoms.

Several nations have already established de facto diplomatic and consular relations with the embryonic Kurdish state in Iraq (the Kurdish Regional Government). The Kurdish government operating from Erbil and Sulaimani enjoys virtual diplomatic ties, through the presence of Consulate Generals in the two Kurdish cities, with Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, the United States, Britain, France, and even Turkey, but not Saudi Arabia. The recent opening of diplomatic offices by Rojava Kurdistan in Sulaimani, Moscow, and Berlin has signaled that the Syrian Kurds are following in the footsteps of their brethren in northern Iraq in a move toward eventual international recognition.

As Turkey continues to further advance its aggressive moves against Russia, alienates NATO allies like the United States, and target Kurds in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey itself, it will descend into the category of a pariah state. Further diminution of Turkey’s diplomatic and «soft power» propaganda influence in the Middle East and NATO will be good news for the Kurds, whose dream of a united Kurdish nation encompassing northern Iraq and northern Syria and eventually, eastern Turkey, is closer than ever.