MESOP : Turkey Opens New Front Against Kurds in Syria

By Dion Nissenbaum and Ayla Albayrak – Wall Street Journal – 2015-10-27 19:07 GMT

ISTANBUL — The Turkish military has opened a new front in the increasingly complicated Syrian war by staging attacks on Kurdish militants backed by the U.S., according to Kurdish forces and Turkish officials.

Over the weekend, Turkish forces hit Kurdish fighters controlling two strategic towns in Syria along Turkey’s border, Kurdish militants in the region said.The strikes, which Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appeared to confirm in a television interview on Monday, create new dangers for the Kurdish militants in Syria–one of the most effective fighting forces in the war against Islamic State.Mr. Davutoglu said that Turkey carried out two strikes on Kurdish forces as a warning to the fighters against expanding their control into parts of Syria that Turkish officials hope will serve as a safe zone for returning refugees–and as a base for Syrian militants backed by the government in Ankara.

“If the YPG moves to the West of river Euphrates, we will hit it,” Mr. Davutoglu said in the interview. “We have already hit two times.” Turkey considers the river a “red line”.

A senior Kurdish official, Idres Nassan, denied that the YPG had made any moves in the region without coordinating with the U.S.-led coalition. “Our forces have not moved from the east bank of the river since they took over Tal Abyad [in June],” he said.The strikes pose a fresh challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to develop a revised strategy in its fight against Islamic State and contain the entry of Russian forces now carrying out airstrikes against Syrian militants to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.After scrapping a failed plan to train thousands of Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State, the U.S. has started dropping military supplies to Arab fighters in northern Syria who are aligned with the Kurdish forces.Turkish leaders have warned U.S. officials that they oppose increased cooperation with Kurdish YPG fighters, who they consider to be terrorist forces aligned with Kurdish militants known as the PKK, who are embroiled in a direct conflict with Turkey.

“Those who provide arms to the PKK, or the YPG, should know that those will end up not serving peace in the region,” Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s long-dominant Justice and Development Party, told reporters this month.The U.S. has worked with Turkey to contain Kurdish territorial ambitions by agreeing not to let YPG forces move west of the Euphrates River into the area in which Turkey hopes to create a safe zone.

But the U.S. is quietly stepping up its cooperation with the YPG by launching a program to provide more weapons to a loose coalition of Arab and Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Two weeks ago, the U.S. military dropped the first 50 tons of ammunition and supplies for Arab fighters in northern Syria. The Pentagon said at the time that none of the equipment had been given to Kurdish forces. Privately, however, administration officials said that they had little concern about the military supplies being shared with the YPG. The deepening U.S. cooperation with the YPG in Syria sets the stage for a military response from Turkey, which is worried that emboldened Kurdish leaders will step up their demands for an independent state in Kurdish dominated areas straddling parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.Over the weekend, the Turkish military fired on YPG forces in two Syrian towns: Kobani and Tal Abyad, a predominantly Arab town that Kurds recently absorbed into the area they hope will one day become an independent state, according to Kurdish forces.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the time that his country wouldn’t stand by as Kurdish forces expanded their areas of control. “All they want is to seize northern Syria entirely,” Mr. Erdogan said on Saturday. “We will under no circumstances allow northern Syria to become a victim of their scheming. Because this constitutes a threat for us, and it is not possible for us as Turkey to say ‘yes’ to this threat.”