This post is, to a great extent, a response to Joseph Micallef's recent analysis of Russia's evolving Syrian engagement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance dominated by Kurds of the Democratic Union Party (PYD)/Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) (see Joseph V. Micallef, "The Enemy of My Enemy: Russia and the Kurds Reshape the Syrian Civil War," on the World Post (2/21/16), at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/the-enemy-of-my-enemy-rus_b_9282978.html). The larger point here, that Russian intervention in Syria is transforming the civil war in ways that will ultimately give Moscow a privileged role in determining the fate of the country, is revealing on the course of U.S. engagement with Syrian opposition since the beginnings of the conflict. Notably, the Obama administration's largely hands-off approach in assisting moderate Sunni Arab opposition/Free Syrian Army contingents and, secondarily, Kurdish forces, with the overall goal of undermining the growth of the Islamic State, has created a leadership vacuum into which Russia has taken a lead role in defining a more comprehensive vision of what Syria should look like. In this respect, we should probably be grateful that neither the Islamic State nor Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, has a place at Putin's table! Furthermore, granting a certain latitude to Micallef's conclusions in this respect, it seems conceivable that Russia is open to the idea of an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Syria, along the Turkish border (i.e. in areas bordering traditional Kurdish areas of Turkey, within which the allied Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), regarded as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the U.S., operates). To the extent that this is the case (and I'm not entirely convinced by Micallef's argument, just hopeful), it appears that Putin is willing to jettison the idea of a wholly unified Syria under control of the Alawite Assad regime in Damascus in the interest of pursuing a pragmatic strategic alliance with the SDF coalition. If this is true, and if Russia remains willing to back up its vision minimally with tactical air power, then it would, at least, seem possible that the conflict might be brought to some kind of conclusion through a limited federalization of the country, provided IS controlled areas can be retaken by either government forces, SDF, or a combination of the two, supported by Russian air power.
To the extent that IS is our primary target of interest in Syria and the continued existence of the Assad regime, however mitigated by a partial political division of the country, remains, at most, a secondary issue of American engagement with the Syrian civil war, such a situation might not be unambiguously contrary to American interests. The problem here is, however, that our NATO ally, Turkey has interests, in its long run conflict against Kurdish nationalism in its eastern regions, that are not wholly congruent with our own, in our efforts to deny radical Sunni Salafism, either represented by al Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra or IS, a base in Syria and/or western Iraq. The Turkish AKP government is not only engaged in military operations against PKK in its eastern regions, but Turkish forces have also engaged in bombardment of YPG/SDF forces around the town of Azaz. Moreover, according to Micallef, Turkey may be contemplating outright invasion of Syrian territory in the vicinity of Azaz and IS controlled Manbij, with the expressed intent of denying SDF forces of the opportunity to establish a link between Kurdish controlled territories on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River and the Afrin region in Syria's northwest. Emphatically, Turkey's conflict with the PKK in its own territory and against the SDF/YPG/PYD in Syrian territory represents a complication to American involvement in the struggle against IS. For his part, Micallef suggests that Turkish forces have been complicit in allowing the growth of IS as an unfortunate but innocuous and mildly beneficial occurrence in its struggle to suppress Kurdish nationalism on both sides of the frontier.
Acknowledging the utility of maintaining a forward air base at Incirlik in Turkey for tactical air support of anti-IS forces, including SDF, the current status of our relationship with Turkey represents a defined problem for U.S. policy in relation to Syria if, on the one hand, our primary goal is to contain and/or destroy IS and, on the other hand, SDF constitutes the most successful ground entity in the war against IS in Syria. Furthermore, with Russian air power being actively deployed in support of SDF and the probability of eventual Turkish ground intervention against SDF, we may have to contend with the consequences of a direct military confrontation between forces of the Russian Federation and a NATO state! In this respect, given article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, we would, conceivably, be committed to engage in military operations against the Russian Federation in defense of offensive military operations by Turkey against military forces whose objectives are fully consistent with our own, relative to the struggle against militant Salafism/IS in Syria.
In this respect, as in many others, I have serious concerns about the current organizational structure of NATO, continued U.S. involvement in the alliance, and the consequences of NATO's present geographic reach relative to the evolution of Russian nationalism, bolstering Putin's ideological appeal. Expressly, at some point in the immediate future, it seems imperative that the Obama administration or its successor reconsider the American role in NATO, specifically in relation to the problem of Turkish domestic politics (i.e. the lingering conflict against Kurdish nationalists). These problems clearly transcend the limited circumstances of the Syrian civil war, but the impending conflict between Turkey and Russia over the SDF, whatever its origins, are bringing them front and center. It makes no sense for the U.S. to be drawn into a conflict between Turkey and Russia over the legitimate national aspirations of Turkish and Syrian Kurds, especially when those legitimate national aspirations are being nominally defended by an anti-democratic, anti-liberal autocratic like Putin!
As Micallef's article suggests,, the broader problems between Kurdish populations and the post-Ottoman state of Turkey have their origins in the Lausanne Treaty (1924) and its apportionment of geographic space between post-Ottoman Turkey, Britain, and France. Insofar as these apportionments are, similarly, pertinent to a discussion of the conflict between Sunni and Shi'a populations in Iraq, to say nothing of the Iraqi Kurds, they are critical to a discussion of the conflict between Syria's Kurds, Sunnis, and Alawites and they, likewise, substantially shape the evolution of the modern state of Turkey. It is not the responsibility of the U.S. to dictate a political resolution in the conflict between the government of Turkey and its Kurdish population, but, if this ongoing conflict holds the potential for expenditures of American lives and American tax dollars, then, to whatever extent Putin has assumed ownership of Syria's civil war and accepted the potential expenses of military involvement and domestic terrorism by militant Salafists of various nationalities, we hold a palpable stake in the peaceful resolution of conflict between Turkey and its Kurds, at least in the interest of preventing the commitment of American troops into an unnecessary conflict to defend a country committed to denying political autonomy to one of its disparaged ethnic minorities. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we allow even one American soldier to die in defense of Recep Erdoǧan's vision for domination of Turkey's Kurdish citizens!
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