[On Wednesday, Mr. Erdogan’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, added another warning: that arming the Kurds could have “consequences” for the United States and a “negative result.” He did not go into detail, promising only that Mr. Erdogan would elaborate when he meets President Trump at the White House next week.]
By Anne Barnard and Patrick
Kingsley
 |
|
President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan of Turkey addressed members of his ruling
party in Ankara this
month. Credit Turkish Presidential Press Office
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ISTANBUL
— President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan of Turkey lost his first major political battle with the Trump administration,
which is arming the Syrian Kurds who the Turks consider enemies. The question
now is what Mr. Erdogan, a headstrong leader, will do next.
The White House made the move to arm the
Kurdish fighters, despite vociferous objections from Turkey, because it
considers them an effective military proxy in the fight against the Islamic
State.
But doing so comes at a cost. Angering Turkey
risks a rupture with an important NATO ally that is being courted by Russia,
and could have an unpredictable impact on the battle against the Islamic State
and the wars in Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Erdogan and his aides have warned for
months about taking more aggressive, though unspecified, actions against
Kurdish militants — though in a different stronghold, Iraq. And analysts say
such a plan would make some strategic sense.
On Wednesday, Mr. Erdogan’s prime minister,
Binali Yildirim, added another warning: that arming the Kurds could have
“consequences” for the United States and a “negative result.” He did not go
into detail, promising only that Mr. Erdogan would elaborate when he meets
President Trump at the White House next week.
Mr. Erdogan also sharply criticized the Trump
administration’s decision in remarks quoted by Turkish news media, and said he
hoped it would be “reversed as soon as possible.”
Analysts believe Mr. Erdogan could now seek a
quid pro quo in return for swallowing the American decision to work ever more
closely with the Kurds in Syria.
In return, Mr. Erdogan could seek an American
green light for a newly forceful intervention against Turkey’s Kurdish foes in
Iraq, the P.K.K.
Experts said that would mostly consist of
Turkey increasing its periodic bombing runs on the militants. But in the most
extreme case, the Turks could coordinate a ground operation likely carried out
by rival Kurdish forces friendly to Turkey, said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey
expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
For decades, the P.K.K. has fought an
on-and-off insurgency inside Turkey, aided by its bases in northern Iraq. The
group has been coordinating lately with Iraqi militias that are backed by Iran,
another power that Turkey views as a threat.
“I tend to take the Turkish president at his
word,” said Aaron Stein, a Turkey specialist at the Atlantic Council, a
Washington think tank. “If he keeps telling everybody that he could do
something in Iraq, I tend to think he could do something in Iraq.”
Striking in Iraq would accomplish some
Turkish goals, several analysts said. While it would do little to prevent the
Kurdish autonomous areas inside northeast Syria from consolidating, it would
isolate those cantons from Kurdish areas in Iraq. It could stop the Kurds from
expanding their power in the region further and from possibly bolstering the
Kurdish nationalist movement inside Turkey — Mr. Erdogan’s ultimate worry.
It would also make it harder for Iran, a
rival for power in the region whose proxies are friendly with the P.K.K., to
keep a continuous corridor of influence stretching from Tehran through Iraq and
northern Syria to the Mediterranean.
Underscoring the complexity of alliances in
the region, the P.K.K. is a parent organization of the Americans’ newly
official Syrian Kurdish partner. The Syrian group, known as the Y.P.G., has
used the chaos of war to carve out de facto semiautonomous zones inside Syria.
Mr. Erdogan “can live with a Y.P.G. statelet
in northern Syria,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former American ambassador to
Turkey. “He can’t live with a Y.P.G. statelet that is supported by the U.S. and
is linked with Iran.”
Analysts say Turkey could move against the
P.K.K. around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. Turkish officials worry that the
group is trying to establish new headquarters there that could give it control
of a strategic route between Syria and Iran. (The group’s existing Iraqi
headquarters are in the Qandil mountains, in another part of northern Iraq.)
Mr. Erdogan declared just last month that
Turkey was obliged to keep attacking the P.K.K. on Mount Sinjar “until the last
terrorist is eliminated.”
“They will do everything they can do to take
it out before it becomes P.K.K. headquarters No. 2,” Mr. Cagaptay said.
“I think this could be the basis of the
Trump-Erdogan deal,” Mr. Cagaptay, who is Turkish, said after the Trump
administration announcement about arming the Syrian Kurds. “Erdogan looking the
other way as Trump moves to take Raqqa” with the Syrian Kurds, while Mr. Trump
looks the other way, or even helps behind the scenes, as Mr. Erdogan strikes in
Iraq.
A central contradiction now bedeviling United
States-Turkey relations is that, while the United States agrees with Ankara
that the P.K.K. is a terrorist group, American forces work with its Syrian
affiliate so closely that the Kurdish fighters help call in U.S. airstrikes.
And those Syrian militants will now receive heavy machine guns and armored
vehicles from the Pentagon.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu,
said on Wednesday that “every weapon” that goes to the Syrian Kurdish group is
“a threat against Turkey.”
Taking on the Syrian Kurds more forcefully
would be difficult. Besides the militants’ close relations with the United
States, the Turkish Army is considered too weak, and Kurdish militias in Syria
too strong.
Militarily, “the Turks are not in a position
to take this on,” said Naz Durakoglu, who helped develop Turkey policy at the
State Department during the Obama administration.
After at least a dozen Turkish attacks on the
Syrian Kurdish militants last month, the United States took emphatic steps to
prevent further clashes, by moving troops to the border in Humvees as a buffer
between Turks and Syrian Kurds.
They even flew American flags, a symbolic and
provocative move usually avoided in Middle Eastern interventions.
That leaves Iraq, where Turkey would face
fewer obstacles. The P.K.K. there does not operate under the cover of Syrian
Kurds and would therefore not be supported by Washington.
Mr. Erdogan could likely count on the backing
of the dominant Kurdish faction in northern Iraq, which controls Iraqi
Kurdistan and has a difficult relationship with the main Kurdish groups in
Turkey and Syria.
But if Turkey did move on Mount Sinjar,
easing one geopolitical headache for Washington in Syria, it would create new
complications for another American partner, the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
In yet another indication of the complexity
of the battlefield, the United States works indirectly with Iranian-backed
Iraqi Shiite militias against the Islamic State.
The Iraqi government, which balances ties
between the United States and Iran, relies heavily on those Iran-backed
militias to assist its military. Baghdad would not look kindly on a Turkish
incursion into its territory, which it would see as a provocative act and a
disruption of its fight against ISIS.
Follow Anne Barnard @ABarnardNYT and Patrick
Kingsley @PatrickKingsley on Twitter.
Tim Arango contributed reporting from
Baghdad, Maher Samaan from Paris and Karam Shoumali from Istanbul.
