Turkish takeover of Afrin might bring disaster - US scholar

“Disaster might follow if Turkey decides to take over Afrin city center,” Steven Heydemann, one of the United States’ most prominent Syria scholars, told AhvalTV in a recorded interview, full version of the talk is pasted at the end of this article.

The U.S. partnership with the Syrian Kurds will be “relatively short” despite the fact that top U.S. officials have said their commitment to stay in northern Syria is open-ended, said Heydemann, a professor in the Middle Eastern studies at Smith College and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Heydemann was the point person for Syrian affairs at the U.S. Institute of Peace until 2015, and his close contacts with the Syrian opposition and influence over the Syrian discussions in DC in those years are well known.

The rationale for Turkey’s operation into Afrin is the “growing concern on the part of the Turkish government about the Syrian Kurds' aspirations to create a continuous, some type of local government along the Turkey border,” according to Heydemann.

The scholar also suggests that the frayed tensions between Turkey and its NATO allies the United States may be partly due to their difference in though about whether the Syrian Kurds really want an independent state.

Washington, according to Heydemann, thinks the Kurds want a type of “robust self-governance to gain leverage before the final status of Syria decided.” Heydemann said that some of the moves made by the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the U.S.-backed group which has been pushing for this kind of self-governance in the northern Syrian cantons bordering Turkey have created enormous concerns to Turks.

“There is not much dispute about the connections between the PKK and the PYD,” said Heydemann. “But whether the PYD poses the same kind of threat as the PKK does is debatable.”

When it comes to the life span of the partnership between the U.S. and Kurdish forces, Heydemann sees “a strong possibliity” that it will be “relatively short.” Heydemann underlines that he holds this view in the full knowledge that “some senior U.S. officials have promised the U.S. would stay in Syria in an open-ended fashion.”

This, told Heydemann to Ahval's Ilhan Tanir, is because there is “no legal basis for U.S. forces to stay in Syria once ISIS is defeated,” because the Syrian government has openly demanded that U.S. troops withdraw, and there is no UN Security Council resolution to support their continuing stay.

For its part, the United States argues that the battle against the Islamic State is still ongoing, and that the presence of its forces in Syria could push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime towards adopting the democratic process. It is also keen, according to Heydemann, to maintain the “leverage” its presence in Syria provides against growing Iranian influence in the country.

However, the 2000 U.S. troops deployed will not give much leverage against Damascus or Iran, according to Heydemann, so there is a considerable chance of failure in both these objectives.

Turkey appears to pay little heed to the U.S. warnings that remnants of ISIS still exist and must be rooted out. Heydemann is far less optimistic than Ankara on this subject, pointing out that in a recent survey in Eastern Syria, around 20 percent of Arabs from Raqqa to Deir al-Zor said that they continued to see ISIS favourably.

So, Heydemann repeats, “there is some basis for US to work to do to insure ISIS defeat.”

Meanwhile, according to Heydemann, relations between the United States and its Syrian Kurdish allies are already showing signs of erosion, as demonstrated by the shift of Kurdish fighters away from the fight against ISIS to defend Afrin against Turkish forces.

“Likely within a year or 18 months, we will see the removal of US forces and this will leave Kurds to manage its own affairs, and the U.S. might support local Arab governance more in the region,” said Heydemann.

The Brookings scholar therefore recommended that Ankara officials should take U.S. statements on the country’s “open-ended commitment in Syria “with more than a grain of salt.”

Heydemann also dismisses speculation that the United States could use Kurds to counter Iranian influence in Syria, as the Kurds do not possess nearly enough resources to stymy Iran. “Kurdish interests in N.Syria would not want Iran as an enemy,” he said, adding they would have nothing clear to gain by joining the U.S. efforts to block Iran’s advance.

“The Syrian Kurds would want a political settlement which will meet their minimum security guarantees and role in the local government,” said Heydemann. “This settlement can be with the Assad regime, or meeting Iranian and Russian demands that Assad regime would have rights over northern Syria.”

The potential Turkish takeover of Afrin is, for Heydemann, “very very troubling” as civilian casualties could rise dramatically when fighting moves to urban areas.

Heydemann was also firmly against suggestions that refugees hosted by Turkey could be moved back into the northern Syrian territories occupied by Turkey.

“Demographic changes by military forces are considered against international laws and these are crimes under international human rights law,” he said, adding that forcing refugees to return would be against international law.

There is a precedent for such a misguided action in the region: Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad displaced Kurds from the area during the 1970s and sent in Arab settlers. If this is done again, it could lead to “generations of conflict,” said Heydemann.

“Both sides feel victimized, treated unjustly. This would be so misguided, so dangerous, I hope that the Turkish government seeks an alternative path. Frankly that path lies halting the operation to completely take Afrin,” said Heydemann.

Instead, he suggests Turkey should let “a negotiations process” begin with “Russian, Kurds, and the Assad regime to reach a political settlement in which Turkish security concerns are met to prevent the disaster that might follow if it occupies central Afrin.