Turkish Incursion into Northern Syria Ongoing Risks

• Turkish armoured and vehicle mounted pushed into northern Syria on 20 January, supported by members of the Free Syrian Army.
• The offensive targets Kurdish militia groups, collectively the YPG, which have received western backing against the Islamic State. This potentially places Turkey at odds with several of its NATO allies.
• Turkish authorities view the YPG as an off-shoot of the PKK organisation, which conducts frequent attacks within Turkey.

Armed Conflict: Following a protracted build-up period, and cross border bombardment, Turkish forces crossed the border into Syria’s Afrin region on 20 January 2018. Turkish troops, supported by armoured vehicles and irregular troops from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) launched offensive operations against a series of defended villages near the Turkish border, held by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia branch, the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Turkey’s justification for the attack stems from the PYD’s close connections to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) terror group which frequently conducts attacks against the Turkish state throughout Turkey, seeking to create an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey’s south-east. Turkey has been waging an intermittent counter insurgency against the PKK for decades, although the intensity increased following the regional upheaval surrounding the wars against the Islamic State (IS), and the Turkish President’s increasingly Islamist and authoritarian domestic policies. Observers have suggested that the Turkish government intentionally escalated the campaign in order to improve domestic support among its electoral base. The Turkish government claimed that Kurdish groups had used the Afrin region as a staging area for attacks into Turkey.

On the other hand, the United States and other NATO countries, have made concerted efforts to arm, train, and advise Kurdish militias throughout the region, as they proved more effective than local regular forces at countering the threats posed by the Islamic State group. Whilst these countries broadly recognise the PKK in Turkey as a terror group, the PYG and YPG are seen as separate entities providing legitimate governance and defence functions to the areas under their protection.

The developing situation in Afrin Province is likely to further escalate tensions across an already fractured region. Numerous armed groups in the region have previously entered into limited cooperation and co-existence based on the common objective of quashing the Islamic State’s growing caliphate. Due to the pace at which the group expanded its territorial reach, regional powers were happy to see the growth of irregular armed groups as a way to greatly bolster the strength of forces opposed to IS. The string of military victories over Islamic State have reduced the group from a major regional actor to a localised insurgency, restricted to sparsely populated strongholds in Syria. In turn, this has led to regional and global powers operating in the region look to the post-IS environment, in which the newly developed array of armed groups all pose potential issues, rather than acting towards a common solution.

Turkey’s priority throughout the Syrian conflict, and the broader effort against IS, has been focused on Turkish national security ahead of regional issues. Turkey initially supported rebels against the Assad regime, and continues to do so; however, more recently, President Erdogan has signalled a willingness to consider a future in which Assad remains in power over Syria. A key element in this has been an increase in violence between Kurdish groups within Turkey and the Turkish state, This has been highlighted by the significantly escalated counter-insurgency operations and air strikes throughout the Kurdish provinces in the south-east. It has changed Ankara’s priorities to resistance against Kurdish independence movements, rather than regime change abroad. Whilst western states tend to view the various Kurdish groups as discrete, Ankara generally acts as if they are closely related entities, if not the same, and has viewed the increasing confidence and international support to Iraqi Kurdistan and the YPG in Syria as factors fuelling its domestic insurgency. Additionally, the Assad regime’s support from Russia, an increasingly close ally of Turkey, has meant that Turkey’s previous refusal to accept a continuation of Assad’s regime now comes with unpalatable political consequences. Despite this slight warming of Syrian-Turkish relations, at present, Syrian regime troops appear to be permitting Kurdish units free and unobstructed use of roads controlled by the regime in order to move additional troops and equipment to the frontlines. It remains unclear what the Syrian regime’s response to this incursion will be.

The Turkish offensive is likely to achieve its immediate military objectives, that is to expel the Kurdish militia forces from its immediate border with Syria. Despite some western support, the YPG/PYG do not have the capabilities to offer significant resistance against heavily armoured regular forces, supported by significant air power and artillery. However, as demonstrated in the south-east of Turkey, this military defeat is unlikely to reduce violence in the region. Many of the Kurdish military leaders have extensive experience in operating as an insurgent force, and are likely to conduct continued guerrilla attacks against Turkish troops long after their main force is destroyed or dispersed on the battlefield. The use by the Turks of FSA irregulars may also act to fuel violence due to the ethnic tensions likely to develop between the Kurdish inhabitants of the Afrin area, and the majority-Arab FSA.

It is likely that other nations, besides Turkey, will launch operations in a similar manner throughout 2018; their main intent being to reduce the prevalence of small, fractured, armed groups exercising power across border regions surrounding Syria. This is likely to be driven by an increase in inter-ethnic and inter-group violence as their shared opposition to IS no longer acts to unify their efforts.