A Syria-Turkey buffer zone is a good idea — on Turkey’s side of the border
A Turkish soldier stands on an armoured personnel carrier as the flag of the Kurdish YPG units is raised over the town of Gire Sipi (Tel Abyad) in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), 2015. Photo: AP
Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute
Shortly before Christmas, President Trump spoke with Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. The Turkish ruler promised Trump that US forces were no longer needed inside Syria as Turkey would fight the Islamic State. Trump may not have realized Erdo?an’s insincerity: Erdo?an was complicit in the Islamic State’s rise and sustenance, as both intelligence and forensic evidence revealed. “Our troops are coming home!” Trump tweeted.
The sudden shift in US policy led both Defense Secretary James Mattis and Special Envoy Brett McGurk to resign, but in subsequent weeks senior national security and defense officials convinced Trump to slow the withdrawal, if not change his mind completely. The reason to keep US troops in eastern Syria is clear: Maintaining a small presence is a deterrent from other groups from filling the vacuum. A small US contingent, for example, disrupts the so-called land bridge by which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sends fighters and supplies across Iraq and into Syria and Lebanon. A small presence is also important for intelligence gathering. Most importantly, a US “trip wire” prevents other countries like Turkey from invading the area.
Turkey, of course, wants the United States to depart Syria so that Turkey can have free rein to target the Syrian Kurds and the self-governing entity they have established inside Syria. Simply put, Turkey’s decades-long history combating a Kurdish insurgency at home, combined with rampant racism in Turkey’s leadership, has left Turkish authorities unable or unwilling to differentiate between the peaceful expression of Kurdish identity and terrorism. This is one of the reasons why, after Erdo?an ordered Turkish forces into Syria’s Afrin district (despite never having identified a single terrorist event directed from there), Turkish authorities razed Kurdish houses, dug up graveyards, and knocked down statues, all the while ethnically cleansing the district’s population.
The US is invested in protecting the Kurds, however. Syrian Kurdish militias were single-handedly the most successful groups combating al Qaeda and the Islamic State inside Syria. While the Obama administration initially kept Syria’s Kurds at arm’s length in order to win Turkey’s cooperation against the Islamic State, Turkey’s double game eventually convinced US authorities that they had no choice but to work directly with the Syrian Kurds. To abandon the Kurds to Turkey would be to invite slaughter for Kurds who have nowhere else to go. It would also signal to all current and future US partners that the US does not stand by allies.
Kurdish YPG fighters hold their movement’s flag while a Turkish soldier looks at them near the Akcakale crossing gate between Turkey and Syria, 2015. Photo: AFP
With the US withdrawal from Syria off the table for now, and with the Turks recognizing that they cannot make an end-run against US interests, negotiations now center on a buffer zone inside Syria to keep Kurdish forces away from the Turkish border. A buffer zone to separate the Turkish military and Kurdish forces might be a good idea, but if it is to succeed in its stated purpose rather than simply be cover for renewed Turkish ethnic cleansing, it should be on the Turkish side of the border rather than inside Syria.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Turkish army razed thousands of Kurdish villages on the Turkish side of the border as part of Ankara’s counter-terrorism strategy and in order to create a cordon sanitaire to hamper insurgent and terrorist infiltration from Syria and safe haven within Kurdish villages. The destruction of those towns and villages sent millions of Kurds fleeing to Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and other major Turkish cities. There was no corollary destruction of Kurdish population centers inside Syria, however, many of which hug the Turkish border.
In effect, to welcome any safe-zone in Syria is to do to Kurdish towns and villages there what the Turkish military did in its own territory more than a quarter-century ago. Add into the mix that the drive for the buffer zone is fueled more by Ankara’s irrationality and Erdo?an’s desire to distract from his own economic failings and there simply is no reason to make the Kurds pay the price.
If Turkey wants a buffer, the US position should be clear: The Turkish army should withdraw from Syria, and evacuate perhaps 10 kilometers from the Syrian border in favor of international observers. If that might sound outrageous to the Turkish audience, then perhaps they should consider how their own demands appear outside those trapped within the Turkish media bubble.
Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.
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The article first published at American Enterprise Institute.
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