Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to launch a new ground military operation against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria. Erdogan has made similar threats in the past months, but he did not carry out the operation for various reasons, including the Russian and American opposition to it.

However, Erdogan's threats should not be viewed now as a new maneuver or as an indication of Turkish inability to escalate the confrontation with the armed Kurdish situation in northern Syria and Iraq.

In addition to its legitimate security concerns with the YPG and its close association with the PKK, Turkey has plenty of compelling reasons to re-introduce the option of a ground military operation.

First of all, Ankara no longer trusts the American and Russian promises to it in this matter, because Moscow and Washington previously promised it in 2019 to work to remove the Kurdish units from the border areas and disarm them, but that did not happen.

Also, based on the experience of Operation Peace Spring and previous Turkish operations, Turkey realizes that only military action on the ground can push the Americans and Russians to seriously consider its security needs.

In short, the ground operation that Erdogan is talking about today is not an option or a maneuver, but rather a need for Turkey to impose its security needs when it is unable to do so by other means.

Over the past years, Turkey has been demanding that Russia and the West look seriously and honestly at its security concerns about the Kurdish People's Protection Units.

Russian and American officials usually resort to silence or, at best, acknowledge Ankara's right to combat terrorism to avoid embarrassment in front of their Turkish counterparts, but they race to issue warnings of the consequences of escalating tension when Turkey decides to act to confront the real dangers threatening its southern borders.

Washington provides great military and political support to the Kurdish units under the pretext that they actively participated in the fight against "ISIS" (the Islamic State), and that the continuation of this support is necessary to face the dangers of the organization's return, but with this support it not only contributed to endangering the security of a NATO member state, Rather, it endangered its relationship with a strategic partner.

The American handling of this issue is particularly troubling.

It is no secret to any sane person that the Kurdish units are organically linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Washington and other Western capitals place on the terrorist list.

The United States' preference for the relationship with the Kurdish units at the expense of its partnership with Turkey reflects two important aspects: First, the sympathetic tendency of the Kurdish autonomy project in decision-making circles in Washington still outweighs the priority of restoring the relationship with Turkey, which reflects a strategic failure to appreciate the consequences. This policy is related to Washington's relationship with Ankara, and the long-term basic American interests in Syria.

This myopia led Turkey to treat the US relationship with the Kurdish units as a direct threat to its national security, and contributed to the formation of a new geopolitical identity for Turkey that is increasingly far from its Atlantic identity.

As for the second aspect, it relates to the American failure to formulate a new policy in Syria that is compatible with the internal and international transformations that have taken place in the conflict in recent years.

Not only did US policy push Ankara to deepen its partnership with Moscow in Syria, but it is currently working to make Turkey reposition itself in Syria in a way that further weakens US and Western interests there.

As a result of its growing concerns about the United States continuing to feed the Kurdish separatist project, Ankara has shifted from seeking to overthrow the regime in Damascus to openness to it in order to cooperate with it in combating separatist threats.

This shift has helped Russia, in particular, to consolidate the results of its military intervention in Syria, and to work with Ankara to weaken the Western role.

Russia was more adept at using the contradictions between Turkey and its Western partners to entice Ankara more to support its strategy in Syria.

However, the Russians are still unable to fully understand the Turkish security concerns regarding the Kurdish units, and they deal with this issue as a bargaining chip with the Turks in Syria and other issues.

It is fair to say that Russia has been more understanding of Turkey's needs in Syria compared to the West, mainly because President Vladimir Putin recognized Moscow's strategic importance in fostering a rift between Turkey and the Western system.

But the Russian ingenuity proved to be limited by the limits of strategic myopia as well in approaching the armed Kurdish situation.

Moscow is working unrealistically to hold the stick in the middle between Ankara and the Kurdish units. On the one hand, it is looking to push the Kurdish faction to abandon its relationship with the United States and return to the orbit of Damascus, an approach that contradicts the nature of the deep relationship between the Kurdish units and the United States.

On the other hand, it wants to limit Turkey's expansion of the areas it controls in northern Syria.

If the relationship between Washington and the Kurdish units constituted a very bad test for the historical alliance between Ankara and Washington, then the Russian stick in the middle is also a bad test for the partnership with Turkey in Syria.

Although Turkey was able, due to its military intervention in Syria since 2016, to establish large areas of influence under its control, and limited the ability of the regime and its allies to regain control of these areas so far, it worked to ensure that Syria would not be divided, and it fought the Kurdish separatist project not on behalf of Not only its interests, but also Damascus, which would not have been able with its allies to curtail the American and Western role in Syria had it not been for the American involvement.

The United States was not forced to keep only about a thousand soldiers of its forces in northeastern Syria had it not been for Operation Peace Spring, which Turkey launched in 2019, and prompted former US President Donald Trump to acknowledge that the US military presence in Syria has become a burden on the United States.

If the one who is most affected by the Kurdish separatist project in Syria is Turkey, not Russia or the United States.

Not only did this project increase the risks on Turkey's southern border, it also led directly to the collapse of the historic peace process between Ankara and the PKK.

This operation promised to end a 4-decade conflict that claimed the lives of 40,000 Turkish civilians.

However, the short-sighted US policy in Syria contributed to its destruction.

When the security equation emerges, there is no room for political bargaining.

This is what Russia and the United States should realize when looking at the Turkish military moves in northern Syria.

The United States can no longer gain from a relationship with the Kurdish units, which greatly harmed its alliance with Turkey, and made Washington marginalized in the conflict equation with Russia and Iran in Syria, but it has more to lose by continuing this approach.

So is Moscow.

Russia is no longer able to achieve more gains in the policy of holding the stick from the middle, but it has a lot to lose in its strategic partnership with Turkey, which goes beyond the Syrian geography and the Russian need to deepen it today more than ever.

The Turkish desire to remove the Kurdish units from the areas of Tal Rifaat, Ayn al-Arab, Kobane, and Manbij is not an option, but rather a need for it and the Syrian territorial integrity.

Ankara has repeatedly confirmed that it does not covet the lands of neighboring countries, and that its military presence in Syria is imposed by security conditions before anything else.

Both Moscow and Washington should view a possible Turkish ground operation through the prism of a legitimate security concern, and abandon using the Kurdish issue as a card to pressure Turkey.

As long as the war is not an end in itself, Erdogan does not seek to close the door to negotiation opportunities with influential actors on the issue of Kurdish units, in order to avoid a greater military escalation.

It is known that Turkey's broad goals are to establish a buffer zone free of Kurdish militiamen at a depth of 30 kilometers on the Syrian side of the border, but Turkish talk is currently limited to the areas of Tal Rifaat, Ayn al-Arab, Kobani, and Manbij as the main targets of the potential operation.

The phone conversation that the Turkish Defense Minister had with his Russian counterpart last Thursday reinforced the belief that Turkey still prefers a settlement with Moscow that leads to the expulsion of the Kurdish units from these areas, without having to launch another ground operation.

Although Russia recently allowed Turkey to use the airspace it controls to strike targets of the Kurdish units, it still expresses clear opposition to any Turkish ground operation.

To avoid worse options, Moscow will be able to offer Ankara a compromise by re-floating the Sochi understandings of 2019, precluding another Turkish ground intervention.

The fact that Turkey is now openly acknowledging the existence of the Syrian regime as a main party to the equation stimulates the chances of concluding a new settlement.