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In order to ease the concerns of skeptics who fear that the domestic peace process with the Kurds could, over time, undermine Turkey’s territorial integrity and national unity, the Turkish government is compelled to demonstrate that it will not tolerate the presence of a heavily armed Kurdish group in Syria with broad autonomous powers. Turkey, though, has little room for maneuver. Attacking the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG would not only jeopardize its newly improved relations with Washington, but it would deal a fatal blow to Turkey’s domestic peace process. Ethnic reconciliation in Turkey and peace and stability in Syria are inseparable. 
BACKGROUND: On July 29, U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Thomas Barrack posted a message of appreciation for Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF): “Your leadership and the SDF’s perseverant efforts, alongside the Syrian government’s resolute commitment to inclusion under President Sharaa, are pivotal to a stable Syria of one army, one government, one state.” Barrack, who is also the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, has met Abdi several times and was present during talks between him and Damascus’ new rulers as he keeps a close eye on the dialogue between the SDF and the transitional government headed by Ahmet al-Sharaa.
For many years, Turkey refused to use the name SDF, claiming that the United States introduced the name to sugarcoat the People’s Protection Units (YPG) -- an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers´ Party (PKK) -- that makes up the bulk of the SDF. The U.S. decision in 2014 to arm and support the YPG against the Islamic State (IS) was viewed as a hostile act by Ankara. Since 2015, YPG/PKK forces have been repeatedly targeted by Turkey, and Turkish cross-border incursions into Syria have at times risked pitting Turkish forces against the U.S. forces protecting the Kurdish militia.
However, the growing U.S. involvement in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad has been welcomed by Ankara. Ankara has expressed appreciation for Barrack’s mediation efforts between Damascus and the YPG. “Barrack represents a new approach—one that understands the regional dynamics, strives for neutrality, and believes that American interests lie in winning hearts across the region. We appreciate this as well. It’s the genuine vision we’ve been waiting for years,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
As a strong backer of Sharaa and his efforts to reunite Syria, Barrack has been on the same page as Ankara, which similarly advocates for a centralized Syrian state. But after a wave of mass killings in July in Sweida, a Druze-majority city, Barrack acknowledged that Syria might need to consider alternatives to a highly centralized state. “Not a federation but something short of that, in which you allow everybody to keep their own integrity, their own culture, their own language, and no threat of Islamism,” he told reporters.
As talks were being launched between Damascus and the YPG, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, on February 25, called on the PKK to lay down its arms and dissolve itself. On March 10, President Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed a landmark agreement to integrate “all civil and military institutions in northeast Syria under the administration of the Syrian state, including border crossings, the airport, and oil and gas fields,” according to a statement by the Syrian Presidency. On July 11, the PKK began to lay down its arms in a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq, but the March 10 agreement in Syria remained unimplemented. That, in turn, jeopardizes the domestic peace process in Turkey, which is intimately linked to the developments in Syria.
IMPLICATIONS: Critics in the opposition in Turkey claim that the decision of the Turkish state last year to embark on a new peace process with the Kurds was motivated by domestic political concerns. The real purpose, they claim, is to secure the reelection of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection, unless snap elections are called by parliament, or the constitution is revised, for which he needs to mobilize the support of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party in return for concessions on Kurdish rights. On July 6, the PKK’s imprisoned founding leader, Abdullah Öcalan, reportedly told a visiting delegation from the DEM Party that he will not stand in the way of the reelection of Erdoğan.
While securing the reelection of Erdoğan is undoubtedly an important driver of the peace process, the Turkish state also has geopolitical motives for seeking to secure the loyalty of the Kurds that it fears would otherwise be tempted to gravitate toward Israel, the new hegemonic power in the Middle East. Israel has been vocal in its support for Kurdish autonomy in Syria, and Israel’s foreign minister has stated that the Kurds are Israel’s “natural allies against Turkey and Iran.”
In contrast to Turkey’s policy of promoting Syria’s territorial and political unity, Israel favors a fragmented and weak Syria. Turkey suspects that Israel is encouraging unrest within the Druze community, and is also intent on strengthening Kurdish positions, leaving Damascus facing military challenges on multiple fronts. The Syrian minority groups remain distrustful of President Sharaa, who has struggled to control jihadist elements, which have been blamed for atrocities against Alawites and against members of the Druze community, who are supported by Israel.
On August 13, Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan issued a strong warning, urging the SDF to abandon hopes of cooperating with Israel against Damascus and to honor its agreement to integrate with the central government. "The YPG/SDF must stop its policy of playing for time," Fidan told a press conference with his Syrian counterpart al-Shibani in Ankara. "Just because we approach (the process) with good intentions does not mean we don't see your little ruses," Fidan said.
Turkey and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding on military training during the visit of al-Shibani. Turkey will help Syria with the provision of weapons systems and logistical tools, and will also train Syria’s army, according to the statement made by Turkish Defense Ministry officials. Meanwhile, Turkish pro-government outlets have raised the possibility of a military offensive by the Syrian army against the YPG.
There are strong suspicions both at the governmental and societal level in Turkey that—with strong U.S. military backing—the Kurds in Syria will continue to pursue separatist ambitions under the banner of the YPG. While Ankara is pressuring Damascus to resist YPG’s demands for a decentralized system, few in Turkey believe the YPG will abandon the gains it acquired.
On September 2, Pervin Buldan, a member of the delegation from the DEM Party that has been meeting with Abdullah Öcalan on the prison island İmralı south of Istanbul, informed that the founding leader of the PKK had emphasized that “Syria and Rojava is my red line,” making clear -- if anyone had believed otherwise -- that he will not call for the dissolution of the YPG or for the dismantlement of the autonomous structure that has been put in place by the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
“Turkey needs to side with the Kurdish people regarding Rojava and Syria. Turkey has nothing to gain from trying to deprive the Kurds of what they’ve gained, and the Kurds in Turkey will never accept this,” Buldan insisted.
However, in order to ease the concerns of skeptics who fear that the domestic peace process with the Kurds could, over time, undermine Turkey’s territorial integrity and national unity, the Turkish government is compelled to demonstrate that it will not tolerate the presence of a heavily armed Kurdish group in Syria with broad autonomous powers. Turkey, though, has little room for maneuver.
Launching military assaults against the YPG would not only jeopardize Ankara’s newly improved relations with Washington, but it would deal a fatal blow to its domestic peace process. Instead, Ankara might try to entice Sharaa to take military action against the YPG, but that would face U.S. resistance, and Sharaa cannot afford to alienate Washington, on whose political and economic support he critically depends.
CONCLUSION: Representatives of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party are calling for a paradigm shift; one that sees the YPG in Syria not from a security perspective but from a “confidence” perspective. They argue that the Turkish nation should rely on a strong secular force in Syria that has its ethnic kin in Turkey, rather than relying on an Arab Sunni force that harbors Islamist tendencies. They also point out that pursuing peace in Turkey while simultaneously threatening the Kurds in Syria -- as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is doing –– defies logic.
Meanwhile, President Erdoğan evokes the supposedly primordial Islamic alliance of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs. History teaches that Turks, Kurds, and Arabs prevail when they are united, and succumb when they are not, Erdoğan claimed. “The victory at Manzikert, the conquest of Jerusalem, the conquest of Istanbul, the defense of Gallipoli, and the War of Independence were all the common wars and victories of Turks, Arabs, Kurds, and of many other Muslim peoples,” he said in a recent speech.
Turkey has come to enjoy good relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq after having resisted the establishment of a Kurdish administrative entity there. That may provide a blueprint for the future relationship between Turkey and Rojava.
Yet the Turkish public remains skeptical that the PKK – although officially dissolved is endowed with a territorial base in Rojava -- has abandoned its nationalist aspirations. The involvement of the United States and Israel in Syria and their backing of Kurdish aspirations validate longstanding Turkish nationalist fears that “Western imperialists” seek the establishment of an independent Kurdistan.
And after having insisted for the past ten years that the Kurdish autonomy in Rojava represents an existential threat to Turkey, the Turkish government must now convince a skeptical public that Turkey’s national security interests in fact call for an entente with the erstwhile enemy.
This is a watershed moment in both Turkey and Syria. The domestic peace process in Turkey and the concurrent attempts to secure peace and stability in Syria are inseparable.
Barçın Yinanç is a foreign policy commentator at the Turkish news site t24.
By Halil Karaveli
This opinion piece was concurrently published in The Financial Times. Read the original piece here.
By arresting opposition mayors, the president is following the playbook of his hero Adnan Menderes — and inviting chaos
A protester in Istanbul this month displays an image of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the city’s mayor whose arrest in March prompted the biggest demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade © Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images
On July 5, Turkish police detained the mayors of Adana, Adiyaman and Antalya on corruption charges, which they deny. They were subsequently arrested. On July 4, the former mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, and the local head of the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) were arrested too.
The CHP carried the municipal elections in March 2024. With nearly 38 per cent of the votes, the party — which was founded by Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — became the country’s leading party in terms of vote share for the first time since 1977. Of Turkey’s 81 provinces, the CHP won 35. It wrested 10 provinces from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s conservative Justice and
Development party (AKP). According to the polls, the CHP would carry a national election if it were held today.
Erdoğan’s response has been to launch an unprecedented crackdown. So far, 17 CHP mayors have been arrested. The arrest of Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, in March sparked the biggest demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade — and a market downturn. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison on charges of insulting a prosecutor.
İmamoğlu called the latest crackdown “a coup against democracy”. Erdoğan
defended it, alleging that the “CHP is mired in corruption”. He told the CHP to abstain from protests and disingenuously called on it to wait for the verdicts of the “independent judiciary”.
It’s now clear that Erdoğan is implementing a blueprint to demoralise and disable the CHP. But it’s equally clear that the CHP has no intention of yielding.
On July 6, CHP leader Özgür Özel exhorted Erdoğan to “come to his senses”,
vowing to mobilise mass protests on the scale of Egypt’s Tahrir Square protests in 2011. On July 7, the public prosecutor of Ankara launched an investigation into Özel — whose parliamentary immunity stands to be revoked — on accusations of “inciting crime”, “threatening public officials” and “insulting the president”.
Erdoğan can deploy the might of the state against opponents. He’s also
emboldened by the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that began disarming on July 11. Yet his autocratic model is unsustainable.
The president hopes to forge an alliance with the Kurds, and secure re-election. But the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy and Equality (DEM) party recognises that the crackdown on the CHP undermines the prospects of reconciliation and has denounced it.
Erdoğan enjoyed widespread popular legitimacy when he had secularist military officers arrested in purges between 2008 and 2014 — as well as when followers of the cleric Fethullah Gülen were purged after a 2016 coup attempt and when he targeted the Kurdish political movement. Today, the majority, including a
significant proportion of Erdoğan’s own base, disapproves of the arrests, and views the allegations of corruption as politically motivated fabrication.
Erdoğan pretends that his electoral majority gives him licence to trample on
democratic and civil liberties. During the Gezi protests against public land seizures in 2013, he said that “democracy is the ballot box, period”. Now, the ballot box itself is ignored. For the first time, that has put Erdoğan on a collision course with a broad majority that won’t passively acquiesce.
Ominously, Turkish history is repeating itself. In the late 1950s another
democratically elected conservative Turkish leader, who also pretended to embody popular will, tried to disable the CHP. After his party lost significant ground to the CHP in elections, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes — who is, not coincidentally, Erdoğan’s political hero — responded by jailing journalists and bringing criminal charges against CHP members of parliament.
The attempt to criminalise the opposition led to protests, and the oppression that the Menderes government unleashed threw Turkey into a deep crisis. In 1960, that government was ousted in a coup by military officers acting outside the chain of command. By abolishing democracy, Erdoğan is also inviting a chaotic end to his rule.
Halil Karaveli is a senior fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the author of Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan.
By Halil Karaveli
The 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and Israel’s demonstration of its crushing military superiority, has added renewed urgency to the Turkish efforts to achieve reconciliation with the Kurds. More than anything else, Turkey fears a Kurdish alliance with Israel. Co-opting the Kurds is both a national security imperative and a necessary condition for the perpetuation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime. The end of the PKK and of the conflict that has plagued Turkey for four decades may well revive Erdoğan’s political fortunes. But the question remains if societal reconciliation can be achieved when reforms for the Kurds are coupled with oppressive measures against the main opposition party. And the Kurds have reason to ask how much they can trust a democratization that is granted from above by a state that could renege on it when it no longer suits its interests.
BACKGROUND: On June 17, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the far right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the key partner of Erdoğan, claimed that “Israel’s political and strategic ambition is to encircle Anatolia and to prevent, on behalf of its patron, the realization of the goal of a Turkey without terrorism.” The latter is a reference to the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that Bahçeli initiated in 2024 while the “patron” of Israel refers, presumably, to the United States.
On October 22, 2024, Bahçeli stunned the country by suggesting that Abdullah Öcalan – the leader of the outlawed PKK which Öcalan founded in 1978 and that has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 – should be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands the organization. On February 27, Öcalan called on the PKK to dissolve and lay down its arms. On May 22, the PKK announced its dissolution. The organization is expected to begin handing over its weapons in early July.
The 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and Israel’s demonstration of its crushing military superiority, has added renewed urgency to the Turkish efforts to achieve reconciliation with the Kurds. Ankara has become increasingly worried that regional turmoil could stoke domestic instability. Above all, Turkey fears a Kurdish alliance with Israel. Last November Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described the Kurdish people as victims of Turkish and Iranian oppression and Israel’s “natural ally” and said that Israel should strengthen its ties with them. Some Kurds are indeed fantasizing about Israeli-Kurdish hegemony in the Middle East.
In October 2024, the pro-PKK newspaper Yeni Özgür Politika republished a section of Öcalan’s Manifesto for Democratic Civilization, written more than a decade ago, in which he suggested that the PKK could align with the United States and Israel against Turkey. That prescription was at odds with the traditionally anti-Israel and anti-American thinking that informs the leftist tradition in Turkey from which the PKK sprang; however, U.S. military-political and Israeli political support for the PKK’s offshoots in Syria during the last decade has changed Kurdish perceptions. Today Öcalan advocates for an alliance with Turkey, but it’s by no means clear that the PKK is fully on the same page as its founding leader. On June 17, Selahattin Demirtaş, the imprisoned former co-chair of Peoples’ Democracy party (HDP) – the DEM Party’s predecessor – was compelled to warn fellow Kurds, as it would seem, against the temptation of “imperialist schemes” and said that such “moves will end with disaster.” Demirtaş pledged that “We are going to stand united as the society of Turkey and if need be sacrifice our lives in the defense of our common fatherland.”
In April, Öcalan reportedly told a visiting delegation from the pro-Kurdish, left-wing Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party that “Netanyahu and Trump want to make Israel the hegemonic power in the Middle East. After Gaza, Lebanon, Syria it’s going to be the turn of Iran and Turkey. The Kurds are absolutely crucial for the realization of this scheme. Whoever succeeds in attaching the strategic position of the Kurds to itself will acquire the superiority in the Middle East.”
Erdoğan and Bahçeli subscribe to the same view; they believe that Israel, as the new hegemonic power in the Middle East represents a threat to Turkish interests and that it will – as Israeli official statements indeed suggest –exploit Turkey’s ethnic divisions. Three weeks ahead of his appeal to Öcalan in October 2024, Bahçeli explained, “When we call for peace in the world, we must also secure peace in our own country.” In an address to parliament the same month, Erdoğan emphasized the need to “fortify the home front” in the face of “Israeli aggression.”
IMPLICATIONS: As Bahçeli’s statement on June 17 about Israel seeking to “encircle Anatolia” makes clear, the Turkish leadership fears an Israeli alliance with the Kurds in Syria – and with the Kurds in Iran, the only group that responded positively to the Israeli exhortation to the Iranian people during the 12-day war to rise up and overthrow the Islamic republic.
In the weeks after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last year, senior Turkish officials repeatedly emphasized their wish to see the PKK’s offshoot, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) disbanded. In December, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described the elimination of the group as Ankara’s “strategic objective,” calling on Syria’s new leaders to dismantle the YPG, expel its commanders and restore central control of all Syrian territory. None of this has happened. The PKK’s affiliates remain in control over northern and northeastern Syria; with an estimated 80 to 100 000 armed militants and backed by the United States, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK retains a position of unmatched military strength and has not committed to disband and disarm.
Statements last year by Fidan suggested that Turkey would undertake an invasion of Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region of Syria, if the new regime in Damascus failed to take action on its own. Ankara’s best hope today is to be able to co-opt the Syrian Kurds, allowing it to contain Israel’s influence. That in turn requires that Turkey first reaches an accommodation with its own Kurdish citizens, releases Kurdish political prisoners like Demirtaş and commits to respecting the democratic rights of the Kurds.
Turkey has a history of turning toward democracy in the face of perceived threats to its national security. In the 1940s, the authoritarian president İsmet İnönü recognized that Turkey, threatened by the Soviet Union, needed to be fully accepted by the West for its own protection. İnönü agreed to hold a free election in 1950 and duly resigned when he lost. At the turn of this century, a push for membership in the European Union prompted successive Turkish governments to implement liberal reforms required for its entry. It’s a very different story now.
On March 19, Ekrem İmamoğlu – the mayor of Istanbul and Erdoğan’s main rival – was detained by police in a dawn raid; he was later formally charged with corruption and suspended from his post as mayor. İmamoğlu’s arrest sparked the biggest demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. Yet, notwithstanding the outpouring of public support, İmamoğlu has – to all intents and purposes – been removed from the presidential equation.
Özgür Özel, the leader of the main opposition, center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) whose members have endorsed İmamoğlu as the party’s presidential candidate, quipped that “the home front isn’t fortified by treating the opposition as the enemy.” The imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş called on the government to put an end to political harassments, pointing out that such practices “don’t contribute to fortifying the home front.” Öcalan is reported to have said that the peace process won’t succeed without the CHP. The pro-Kurdish DEM Party has stood by the CHP, condemning the arrest of İmamoğlu as an assault on democracy.
However, a progressive alliance of the CHP and the DEM Party remains elusive. The DEM Party is optimistic that its aspirations – notably enshrining Kurdish cultural and language rights in the constitution – are eventually going to be accommodated, in return for which the pro-Kurdish party may decide to assist Erdoğan’s reelection. That would require amending the Turkish constitution – which does not allow for a third presidential term – or calling a snap election.
The ruling coalition of Erdoğan’s Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Bahçeli’s MHP lacks the necessary parliamentary majority for both alternatives, making a grand bargain with the DEM Party its likely objective.
CONCLUSION: Co-opting the Kurds is both a national security imperative and a necessary condition for the perpetuation of the right-wing authoritarian Erdoğan-Bahçeli regime. The peace process enjoys broad popular support and the dissolution and disarmament of the PKK is likely going to boost Erdoğan’s standing. The end of the PKK and of the conflict that has plagued Turkey for four decades may well revive Erdoğan’s political fortunes.
But the question remains if societal reconciliation can be achieved when reforms for the Kurds are coupled with oppressive measures against the main opposition party. And the Kurds have reason to ask how much they can trust a democratization that is granted from above by a state that could renege on it when it no longer suits its interests.
Halil Karaveli is a Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and the Editor of the Turkey Analyst. He is the author of Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan (Pluto Press)
Earlier Articles
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Joint Center PublicationsOp-ed Halil Karaveli "The Rise and Rise of the Turkish Right", The New York Times, April 8, 2019 Analysis Halil Karaveli "The Myth of Erdogan's Power", Foreign Policy, August 29, 2018 Analysis Svante E. Cornell, A Road to Understanding in Syria? The U.S. and Turkey, The American Interest, June 2018 Op-ed Halil Karaveli "Erdogan Wins Reelection", Foreign Affairs, June 25, 2018 Article Halil Karaveli "Will the Kurdish Question Secure Erdogan's Re-election?", Turkey Analyst, June 18, 2018 Research Article Svante E. Cornell "Erbakan, Kisakürek, and the Mainstreaming of Extremism in Turkey", Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, June 2018 Analysis Svante E. Cornell "The U.S. and Turkey: Past the Point of No Return?", The American Interest, February 1, 2018 Op-ed Svante E. Cornell "Erdogan's Turkey: the Role of a Little Known Islamic Poet", Breaking Defense, January 2, 2018 Research Article Halil Karaveli "Turkey's Authoritarian Legacy", Cairo Review of Global Affairs, January 2, 2018
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