The Syrian civil war did not turn out how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hoped. Syrian President Bashar Assad (with Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah assistance) largely defeated opposition forces, some of which the United States backed and the most radical of which found support in Turkey.
As the Islamic State surrounded the Kurds in Kobane, a city immediately adjacent to Turkey’s border, Erdogan not only prevented the transit of much-needed supplies to them but at one point also allowed ISIS fighters to traverse Turkey’s border to try to outflank the Kurdish fighters. American airdrops of supplies to Kurdish fighters ultimately helped them break the siege. Only when Turkey recognized the inevitability of the Kurdish triumph did they open the border to Kurdish resupply in order to enable Erdogan to claim a share of the victory.
That the Syrian Kurds managed to fight off not only Assad’s forces but also the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS was not only a minor miracle but a testament to both the Kurdish drive and their belief in the righteousness of their cause. The Kurdish-controlled zone — first called Rojava and then, out of deference to the region’s diversity, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria — was largely successful. It enjoyed stability and security.
Agriculture and oil enabled the administration to make modest economic gains despite the embargo waged against it by the Syrian government, Turkey, and rival political groups in Iraqi Kurdistan. The administration also respected cultural diversity and religious differences, allowing Muslims, Christians, and Yazidis to worship freely and without restriction. Most importantly, Syrian Kurds controlled their territory and did not allow it to be used to launch terrorism into Turkey. The same was not true of Turkish-aligned Arab proxies that often shielded, if not incorporated, al Qaeda and ISIS veterans.
Turkey’s approach toward the Kurds has always been cynical at best and racist at worst. Erdogan reached out to the Kurds before key elections but responded with vengeance when most sought to support Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish and liberal Peoples’ Democratic Party over his Islamist and largely autocratic Justice and Development Party. Erdogan went so far as to offer an olive branch to imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan only to withdraw when it became clear that Turkey’s Kurds had demands of their own. Part of his deal with the Kurdistan Workers Party, however, was to implement his demand that armed Kurds leave Turkey for Syria.
Erdogan’s cynicism was on full display when he proposed a “safe haven” concept for northern Syria. What Erdogan had in mind was far different than that proposed in 1991 by former President Turgut Ozal, who wanted to stem the flow of Kurdish refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein. Ozal allowed autonomy: Erdogan envisioned occupation. Indeed, when the Turkish army and its proxy forces entered the Kurdish-controlled district of Afrin, Syria, they engaged in ethnic cleansing.
U.S. Special Envoy James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Turkey who has amplified Turkey’s narrative both inside and outside government, indulged and encouraged Erdogan’s subsequent proposal for a safe haven in Syrian Kurdish territory. In theory, this was to aid Turkish counterterrorism, never mind that there is no evidence (beyond Erdogan’s own accusations) that the Syrian Kurds launched attacks from their territory into Turkey. Indeed, if counterterrorism really was the goal, then Turkey should have established a cordon sanitaire on its own side of the border. To relocate Syrian Arabs in the territory that until then had been occupied by Kurds and other minorities is, however, textbook ethnic cleansing. Nonetheless, after Jeffrey asked Kurdish officials to dismantle their defenses along the border (which they did), Turkish forces rolled in.
Nine months after Trump betrayed the Kurds and Turkey established the safe zone, how safe is the safe haven? Certainly, Christians and Yazidis have suffered disproportionately. The U.S. betrayal also reinvigorated ISIS. Now, a new report by a Syrian Kurdish women’s organization shows just how bad the situation has gotten for women living under Turkish occupation in Afrin. While it is easy to treat such reports with cynicism, Kurdish research organizations are extraordinarily careful in their research and tend to be conservative in their claims as they understand to get caught in any exaggeration would be ammunition for their detractors to dismiss them.
The report found that women “are oppressed, humiliated, abused, forced to marry, including many underage girls, subjected to torture as well as physical and sexual violence, culminating in rape and femicide.” Turkish occupiers and their Arab proxies have also engaged in cultural destruction, including the razing of heritage sites and banning the Kurdish language in schools (and replacing it with Turkish).
Kurdish authorities also count more than 1,500 attacks on women, more than 1,000 abductions of women, and the murder of more than 50 women between Jan. 20, 2018, and June 1, 2020. The whole report, including its case studies, its methodology, and its statistics, are worth reading. (It can be downloaded here.)
Jeffrey and other realists say U.S. forces were perfectly within their rights to walk away from a deal that was only “tactical and temporary.” If that is true, then they should explain why Turkey’s subsequent ethnic cleansing, systematic violence against women, support for extremism, and the resulting resurgence of ISIS are U.S. interests.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
