The United States and Turkey reached a strategic agreement yesterday that has the potential to end the stranglehold of the IS terror group on parts of northern Syria.
Turkey, which borders Syria and is hosting nearly 2mn hapless refugees fleeing the crIS-torn country, had dithered for months about taking on the deviant group head on but was jolted into action last week after a suicide attack killed 32 people and wounded dozens in the border town of Suruc.
Among the dead were mostly young university activists who were holding a press conference detailing their involvement in the reconstruction work in Kobane, a Syrian town that had been under IS control last year before being re-taken in early 2015.
Turkey has since launched airstrikes on IS positions, much to the relief of the US and other Western powers who were critical of Ankara’s ambivalence on the issue because of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) domestic compulsions.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has strong Islamist leanings, wants to score points with voters after its disappointing performance in June 7 polls and also prevent Kurds gaining a strong foothold in Syria.
His party is also bitterly opposed to the Kurdistan workers Party (PKK) who have been long engaged in a struggle for freedom in the country’s southeast. With the Syrian Kurds also fighting IS, the region has become a complex theatre of war.
According to Turkey, the PKK, which has waged a deadly insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984, is a terror group and the main Syrian Kurdish group fighting IS—the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — as the PKK’s Syrian branch.
“The government has equated the PKK with IS and, although they are two very different entities, this serves the government’s intentions,” said Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.
David Romano, Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University, said the chief focus of Turkey’s campaign may prove to be the PKK rather than IS.
“Ankara thus hits several birds with one stone,” said Romano, author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement.
Ankara is fearful of an autonomous Kurdish region —known as Rojava— coming up on its borders, which could encourage Turkish Kurds, who form about 20% of the country’s population, to align with it.
The government insists it is perfectly logical to equate IS with the PKK, which this week shot dead two Turkish police at home as they slept.
“Though acting with different motivations, the two share similar tactics and goals,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote in the Sabah daily.
Striking against the PKK—still detested by many Turks—could see AKP pick up more nationalist votes if a snap re-poll is held. While this would help Erdogan’s AKP to hold on to domestic power, he should not lose sight of the fact that it is IS that poses a greater risk not only to his country but also to the region as a whole.
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