President Trump’s hasty announcement that U.S. troops would be leaving Syria spelled chaos for the Kurds, our steady allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Since then, the president and his administration have scrambled to find a way to fulfill the promise of bringing troops home while also preventing the Kurds from falling into the hands of the Turks who have vowed to attack their decades-old foe.
But the time to make a deal was before Trump gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exactly what he asked for.
In tweet after tweet since announcing his decision, Trump offered up seemingly various versions of the same story: He was talking with Erdogan, there would be a deal, the Kurds would be protected.
Spoke w/ President Erdogan of Turkey to advise where we stand on all matters including our last two weeks of success in fighting the remnants of ISIS, and 20 mile safe zone. Also spoke about economic development between the U.S. & Turkey – great potential to substantially expand!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019
But none of those tweets have come from diplomatic agreements or yielded a solid plan or even a loose commitment from Turkey. In short, all of those calls for protection and would-be deals are little more than wishful thinking about a nonexistent deal.
Of course, even a deal with Erdogan wouldn’t have been a guarantee of Kurdish safety, but it might well have forced Turkey to think twice before following through with an attack. A deal might have also opened up the potential for renewed talks between Kurdish and Turkish forces.
In the past, negotiated ceasefires in Turkey have worked to restore peace at least temporarily since the armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and the Turkish military began in 1984.
The most recent ceasefire between the two sides started to break down when Erdogan prevented Kurdish fighters from leaving Turkey to join Kurdish militias battling ISIS. And peace entirely collapsed when Turkey launched military strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq in 2015.
When the U.S. joined the fight in Syria and teamed up with the People’s Protection Units, known as the YPG, that complicated the existing tensions between the Kurds and the Turks. Although Turkey considers the YPG to be linked to the PKK, which it has designated as a terrorist organization, Erdogan was wary of attacking Kurdish units allied with the U.S.
At the same time, U.S. pressure on the Kurds through their partnership reduced PKK attacks in Turkey and added an element of stability to the region.
With the U.S. gone, Kurds would likely see little reason to continue to avoid new attacks in Turkey where the conflict between the PKK and the military has claimed more than 4,000 lives, including more than 500 civilians, since July 2015.
Turkey, wary of a Kurdish push for more freedom that it views as an existential threat to the country with separatist overtones, is also unlikely to pursue peace. As for the Kurds battling the remnants of ISIS, Ankara is worried about armed Kurdish fighters coming closer to its borders and supporting domestic PKK elements.
That combination likely leads to spiraling violence as new attacks harden old dislike and fear, living little room for new negotiations. A deal that opened a new round of talks would have at least restarted that process and opened formal negotiation channels between the two groups.
But even though Turkey seems willing to consider various options, Trump is negotiating from a far weaker position, having already given into Erdogan’s demands while getting nothing in return.
That’s not to say that a return to 2014 negotiations between Turkey and the Kurds isn’t possible, but simply that arranging a satisfactory solution that doesn’t tilt the region toward more violence is much more difficult.
That difficulty was on display last week. In Turkey, trying to retroactively set conditions on the U.S. troop withdrawal, national security adviser John Bolton met with disregard from Ankara. After all, Washington had already said it was leaving. Why would Erdogan agree to new conditions?
