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Turkey’s Kurdish anxieties

The Bipartisan Policy Center hosted Cascading Conflicts: U.S. Policy on Turkey, Syria, and the Kurds Tuesday morning. This was nominally a launch of its report on Authoritarianism and Escalation: Preparing for the Worst in Turkey’s Resurgent Kurdish Conflict but ranged rather far from that excellent account of how Turkey has repeatedly turned to war when its government has become more authoritarian.

Eric Edelman, Co-Chair of BPC’s Turkey Initiative and former ambassador to Turkey, discussed the mutual misreading of priorities and interests between Turkey and the US. Amberin Zaman, Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Institute, recalled how the peace talks between the PKK and Turkish government in February 2015 raised hopes for reconciliation that were then dashed by President Erdoğan. Ceng Sagnic, Junior Researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, considered how the Kurdish situation in Syria has thwarted Turkey’s foreign policy and prompted its interventionism. Aliza Marcus, Communications Consultant for the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund at the World Bank, assessed the relationship between the YPG/PYD (the dominant Syrian Kurdish organizations) and the PKK (the dominant Turkish Kurdish organization) as well as Turkey’s position on the question.  Ishaan Tharoor, a reporter for the Washington Post, moderated a lively discussion spanning Turkish domestic politics, the fight against the Islamic State (IS), and more.

Amberin Zaman elucidated how domestic and international factors have influenced Turkey’s position on Syria and the Kurdish question. She maintained that peace talks with the PKK faltered in part because of rising tensions with the YPG/PYD in Syria and also in response to Erdoğan’s presidential ambitions. Growing Kurdish autonomy in Northern Syria has emboldened Kurds everywhere. In the words of Aliza Marcus, no matter how hard the Turkish government hits the PKK domestically, now there will always be a powerful Kurdish presence across the border in Syria.

The conversation then turned to Turkey’s descent into authoritarianism. Ambassador Eric Edelman argued that the US has a vested interest in shaping Turkey’s domestic politics.  Long-term US interests and Turkey’s status as a NATO ally—an alliance intended to be a union of liberal democracies— demand that US use its position to speak out publicly and privately on Turkey’s civil rights violations.

Aliza Marcus explained how the YPG grew out of networks of support for the PKK in Syria. However, despite clear evidence of ties between the two, she said that it is unclear to what extent the PKK and the YPG/PYD are independent decision-makers. She added that, from Turkey’s perspective, the question is irrelevant. The two are one and the same, and nothing will diminish Turkish fears of Kurdish nationalism.

After hearing from audience member and representative of Rojava Cantons, Sinam Mohamed, on Kurdish governance and long-term strategy, Ceng Sagnic contended that Kurdish-controlled areas show more signs of functioning governance than the rest of Syria currently does. He also commented on current Syrian Democratic Force movements into Sunni-Arab areas in northern Syria. Marcus countered that Kurdish forces are not expanding for expansion’s sake, they are simply going where the Islamic State already is–namely Sunni areas.