The noose is tightening around the Syrian Kurds.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to hammer home his intention to order, "when the time comes", a ground offensive in northeastern Syria in retaliation for the attack that left six dead and dozens injured in Istanbul November 13.
This attack, attributed by Ankara to the Kurds of Syria and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq, who deny any involvement, has already paved the way for the air operation "Sword Claw", in the northeast of the Syria.
Washington called on Ankara for restraint while recognizing the legitimacy of its security demands on Tuesday, November 29.
"A continuation of the fighting, and more particularly a ground offensive, would seriously undermine the hard-won gains in the fight against the Islamic State group and would destabilize the region," US General Pat Ryder told reporters.
A call also launched by Moscow, an ally of the Syrian regime.
If Turkey carries out its threats, "we will be forced to expand the scope of this war" to encompass the entire border area, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) warned. Mazloum Abdi, who lamented Washington's "weak" position.
The SDF (dominated by the Kurds) urged Russia to put pressure on Turkey.
Between 2016 and 2019, Turkey carried out three major operations in northern Syria against Kurdish militias and organizations.
The Turkish president, in power since 2002 and candidate for re-election in June 2023, repeats that he wants to create a 30 km wide "security zone" along its southern border.
Supported by the international coalition led by the United States, the SDF had spearheaded the fight against the jihadist group Islamic State in Syria between 2015 (the battle of Kobané) and 2019 (the capture of Baghouz).
Hence a certain bitterness on their part.
For Fabrice Balanche, lecturer in geography at the Lumière Lyon 2 University, Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to ensure his re-election in June 2023 by exalting Turkish nationalism.
But a ground operation could encourage the emergence of a new generation of jihadists from the Islamic State group in Syria.
The state of the forces present in Syria in 2022. © Fabrice Balanche
France 24: What could prevent a Turkish ground offensive in Syria
?
Fabrice Balanche:
If the Russians and the Americans want to oppose it firmly, all they have to do is deploy troops on the border between Turkey and Syria to prevent the Turks from attacking.
However, the opposite is happening.
The Russians have stopped joint patrols with the Turks in areas likely to be attacked.
The same goes for the Americans, who exfiltrated their civilian personnel from northeast Syria.
So the question is not "if" but "when" the offensive will be launched?
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone too far in words and deeds to back down today.
It has been threatening to attack for more than a year, asking for the extension of its security zone.
And it's the right timing.
Russians and Americans need the Turkish president in the Ukrainian crisis.
Nobody wants to mess with him.
He is therefore cashing in on his services to annex a new Kurdish territory in northern Syria.
In the spring, we saw Erdogan veto Finland and Sweden joining NATO because the two countries had too strong ties with the Kurds of Syria.
Sweden has pledged to no longer support them.
In June 2023, there are parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey.
Erdogan has been in office since 2002 but there is some wear and tear on power.
Opposite, the opposition is divided.
On one side, the Kemalists, and on the other, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
The Kemalists will support an attack in northern Syria.
The HDP is headwind against this perspective, which prevents the opposition electoral alliance against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) [President Erdogan's Islamo-conservative party, editor's note].
Erdogan has an interest in launching this ground offensive for domestic reasons, to strengthen Turkish nationalism.
Hitting the Kurds is always the way to rally the population behind him.
electoral alliance of the opposition against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) [President Erdogan's Islamo-conservative party, editor's note].
Erdogan has an interest in launching this ground offensive for domestic reasons, to strengthen Turkish nationalism.
Hitting the Kurds is always the way to rally the population behind him.
electoral alliance of the opposition against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) [President Erdogan's Islamo-conservative party, editor's note].
Erdogan has an interest in launching this ground offensive for domestic reasons, to strengthen Turkish nationalism.
Hitting the Kurds is always the way to rally the population behind him.
What is the situation in northeast Syria
?
I spent a month in the region in January 2022, in Kobané, Raqqa, Deir-Ezzor.
It is a disaster for the population.
She survives.
There was a shortage of fuel, electricity, and bread – which is made with bad flour – is rationed.
This region was Syria's breadbasket in the past.
Lack of fertilizer, irrigation, drought, poor management, war, they are reduced to importing wheat.
It is unlivable.
The population is frustrated and no longer believes in the independent, autonomous becoming of North-East Syria.
The Arabs have never believed in it and do not want it.
The Kurds, even those who are in the local administration, hardly believe in it anymore.
The Turks know they are not going to fight.
Do Kurds feel abandoned or betrayed by Westerners
?
It's hard to admit and they took a long time to do it.
The Kurds no longer trust the United States.
They did not help them when Turkey took over Afrin in 2018 let alone in October 2019 when it conquered Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain.
Each time, the Kurdish population was the victim of ethnic cleansing by the Arab and Turkmen auxiliaries of the Turkish army.
The West provides emergency aid to the region, but it is insufficient to launch a reconstruction process, which is not on the agenda on the donor side.
Moreover, humanitarian and economic aid generate shameless corruption, as in Afghanistan or Mali.
The population is frustrated to see it captured by a minority that is getting richer.
It's good bread for Daesh.
Could this context favor a return of the Islamic State group to Syria
?
Daesh has never really been eradicated.
The fighters are in the maquis or in sleeper cells.
In January, there was the attack on Al-Sinaa prison in Hassaké to free the detainees [3,500 jihadists from the Islamic State group were detained there, including leaders, editor's note].
The city of Hassaké is cut in two.
To the north, there are the Kurds.
To the south, the Arabs.
The prison is to the south.
Fighters have infiltrated southern neighborhoods for months.
They rented apartments.
Then they came out of the woods and launched the assault.
The Kurdish intelligence services saw nothing.
In the Arab zone, there was enthusiasm for what was happening.
There is nostalgia for Daesh.
They say: "With them, things were better. We had oil, electricity, there was trade with Iraq."
We know that Daesh is recruiting a new generation of fighters.
These are teenagers, frustrated people who have the choice between switching to drugs with Captagon [amphetamine derived from a drug used to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorders, Editor's note], which is wreaking havoc in this region, and join Daesh to feel useful, have an identity and earn some money.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
These are teenagers, frustrated people who have the choice between switching to drugs with Captagon [amphetamine derived from a drug used to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorders, Editor's note], which is wreaking havoc in this region, and join Daesh to feel useful, have an identity and earn some money.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
These are teenagers, frustrated people who have the choice between switching to drugs with Captagon [amphetamine derived from a drug used to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorders, Editor's note], which is wreaking havoc in this region, and join Daesh to feel useful, have an identity and earn some money.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
a drug used to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorder, Ed], which wreaks havoc in this region, and join Daesh to feel useful, have an identity and earn some money.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
a drug used to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorder, Ed], which wreaks havoc in this region, and join Daesh to feel useful, have an identity and earn some money.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
You buy people for $50 a month with no problem.
There has been no reconciliation in the region.
The massacres were so massive that tribal regulation no longer works.
It's hard to get forgiveness.
There are thousands of people who are in hiding and who don't dare to return home for fear of the law of retaliation.
They form the basis of Daesh.
In what form could the Islamic State group return? A guerrilla?
Daesh is also present in Iraq, in the Mosul region, in the province of Al-Anbar, in Iraqi Kurdistan.
There are cells that regularly commit attacks.
However, reconstituting the caliphate with a territorial grip, as under the emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is no longer a good strategy.
Daesh understood that managing territory meant managing people's discontent and that this created easy targets for foreign intervention.
Today, Daesh prefers to stay underground, to harass the regime in place, whoever it is.
What is the position of the Syrian regime towards the Turks and the Islamic State group?
The Damascus regime thinks it has won, and objectively it has.
There remains the north of Syria to reconquer.
Areas under Turkish control, notably the Idleb region, will not be easy to reintegrate.
Damascus regained control of two-thirds of the territory thanks in particular to Turkey's benevolent neutrality, in accordance with the Putin-Erdogan secret pact of August 2016: you give me a piece of the Kurds, I give you a piece of the rebels.
Turkey controls 4 million Sunni Arabs who fled the regime in Damascus and do not want to find themselves under the control of the Syrian army.
Damascus does not want to reintegrate these displaced people in the North either, because that would pose a security problem.
After,
there is the problem of the Kurds in the Northeast who are supported by the Americans and who control 30% of the territory, including the oil resources.
Damascus waits for the fruit to ripen.
The Turkish offensive is imminent.
The Syrian regime will not fight against the Syrian Democratic Forces.
He will wait for the Turks to attack and for the SDF to crumble.
Daesh is not a danger for Damascus.
Having it always present makes it possible to unite the Syrians behind the regime.
That's how he was saved in 2014. The priority for Westerners had become the elimination of Daesh and no longer the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
He will wait for the Turks to attack and for the SDF to crumble.
Daesh is not a danger for Damascus.
Having it always present makes it possible to unite the Syrians behind the regime.
That's how he was saved in 2014. The priority for Westerners had become the elimination of Daesh and no longer the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
He will wait for the Turks to attack and for the SDF to crumble.
Daesh is not a danger for Damascus.
Having it always present makes it possible to unite the Syrians behind the regime.
That's how he was saved in 2014. The priority for Westerners had become the elimination of Daesh and no longer the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
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