Professor Michael M. Gunter, Tennessee Tech University
TURKEY
& THE KURDISH FACTOR
Professor
Michael M. Gunter
Tennessee
Tech University
With
the exception of the interminable Arab-Israeli struggle, no other imbroglio in
the Middle East has become so important, complicated, and long lasting as the
Kurdish struggle.[1] The
Kurdish struggle not only involves the Kurds against the four states in which
they live as a large minority (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria), but also now
entangles other regional and even international actors such as the United
States, Russia, and the European Union (EU), among others. In its essence, the
Kurdish problem involves the demand of many (but certainly not all) Kurds for
meaningful self-determination or even independence, but the counter insistence
of the states in which the Kurds live for the preservation of their territorial
integrity, which they feel Kurdish demands challenge. In addition, the broader
scope of the Kurdish struggle recently has come to include the interests of
other regional and even international powers who calculate that the Kurdish
struggle now involves their interests.
The Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the
two Gulf Wars against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003, and the Syrian civil war
that began in 2011, are the main reasons the Kurdish struggle has come to play
such an increasingly important role in Middle Eastern and even international
affairs. In addition, the rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in
Iraq and Rojava (now supposedly broadened into the Federation of Northern Syria
to include the many other ethnic and sectarian groups that live there), has
given the Kurds additional de facto, institutional recognition and existence.
Furthermore, the continuing insurgency of
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and its spill over into neighboring
Iraq and Syria, its peace talks with Ankara from 2009-2015, and its de facto
alliance with the United States to defeat ISIS, have given the PKK an
importance inconceivable a mere decade ago. For example, the PKK played an
important role on the ground in Sinjar, Iraq to help rescue the embattled Yezidis
from the genocidal ISIS jihadis in 2014. Even more so, the PKK, through its
Syrian affiliate Syrian Democratic Forces/Democratic Union Party/Peoples
Defense Units (SDF/PYD/YPG) proved the indispensable boots on the ground that
defeated ISIS in such dramatic battles as Kobane (2014-2015) and Raqqa (2017),
among others. US air and advisory support, of course, were imperative in these
battles, which also brought Turkey, Iran, Russia, Iraq, and Syria, among
others, into the equation. Thus, the Kurdish issue has been used repeatedly as
a weapon against Turkey and others.
In addition, of course, the peaceful,
pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has played an important role in
recent Turkish democratic politics. Since the Turkish parliamentary elections
held on June 7, 2015, the HDP has been represented in parliament. During the
Istanbul mayoral elections held on March 31, 2019 and then rerun on June 23, 2019,
the HDP also probably played a significant background role in electing Ekrem
Imamoglu, the Nation Alliance candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP),
mayor of Istanbul in opposition to Binali Yildirim, Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s candidate. This was because the HDP made the tactical decision
not to run its own mayoral candidate who would siphon off votes needed by
Imamoglu to defeat the Erdogan candidate. The strategy worked.
As for Iraq, Turkey began to face what it perceived as
new, existential threats from the rise of the KRG, a proto-Kurdish state on
Turkey’s southeastern borders, which had resulted from the U.S. defeat of
Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003. Similar in perceived threat to the situation
with Rojava in Syria, the Kurdish problem, in general, also gave such potential
Middle Eastern rivals of Turkey as Syria, Iran, and Iraq, among others, a tool
to employ against Turkey.
However, the Kurdish threat was nothing new. As far
back as 1937, the Treaty of Saadabad between Turkey, Iran, and Iraq had had as
its main implied rationale to harmonize the policies of these three states on
the potentially volatile Kurdish issue that overlapped their borders and
tempted each to use the Kurds against the others. Thus, the Treaty of Saadabad
adumbrated the Baghdad Pact of 1955, which had obligated its members including
Turkey to cooperate against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Formally
known as the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO), the Baghdad Pact had
become increasingly unpopular in the Middle East because it was seen as a tool
of Western imperialism. After Iraq withdrew from it in 1958, its name was
changed to the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO); it was finally disbanded in
1979 following the Iranian revolution.
Despite the U.S.-Turkish joint memberships in NATO,
the Kurdish problem has increasingly strained their relations. For example, in
March 2003, Turkey shocked the United States by declining to support its
invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds quickly became the main U.S. ally on the
northern front, much to the dismay of Turkey. In July 2003, the United States
even arrested 11 Turkish special-forces troops operating in northern Iraq and
accused them of trying to destabilize the region.[2] At the time, this affair
caused an unprecedented crisis in U.S.-Turkish relations, and the U.S. approval
rate in Turkey fell to single digits. In retrospect, however, this affair was a
mere prelude to subsequent crises between the two often resulting from the
Kurdish issue.
Once Saddam Hussein was overthrown, Turkey sought to
play its part in the fortunes of the new Iraq. Supporting the Turkmen claims
over ownership of Kirkuk proved one useful entry. However, Baghdad’s Arab and
Irbil’s Kurdish claims to Kirkuk proved weightier given their much greater
populations on the ground. Even more problematic for Turkey in Iraq was Iran’s
entry into its former enemy of the infamous Iranian-Iraqi war of 1980-1988. The
U.S. defeat of Saddam Hussein stripped the long-ruling Sunnis of their control
of Iraq and handed it to the majority Shiites, who in many (but not all) cases
tended to identify with their sectarian Shiite Iranian cousins. When Tareq
al-Hashemi, an Iraqi Sunni leader, ran afoul of Iraqi Shiite prime minister
Nuri al-Maliki in 2012 and was sentenced to death, Turkey gave him sanctuary.
Maliki quickly excoriated Turkey for interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
In addition, when Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacked Iraq and
quickly captured the city of Mosul, new opportunities arose for both Turkey,
the KRG, and the PKK within Iraqi borders. Only painstakingly did Baghdad claw
its way back from long appeared to be its final death knell.
The KRG and Its Failed
Independence Referendum. The Kurdish struggle and
its impact upon Turkish foreign policy entered a new crisis when some 93 percent
of the more than 70 percent of the KRG voters who participated supported what
was only an advisory, nonbinding referendum on independence held on September
25, 2017.[3]
However, the hopes for an independent Kurdistan aborning in the guise of the
KRG proved premature because of the strong opposition the combined gathering of
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the United States gave it. Furthermore, on October 16,
2017, Iraqi forces with the strong support of the pro-Iranian, Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi or popular mobilizations
units (PMUs),[4] as
well as Turkish and U.S. acquiescence, occupied Kirkuk and other disputed
territories, after already closing the KRG’s two international airports in
Irbil and Sulaymaniya and taking over the KRG’s border crossings. The KRG lost
approximately one-third of the territory and half of the oil that it had been
controlling. Massoud Barzani resigned as KRG president, and the Kurdish region
was thrown from the heights of ambition to the depths of failure. When Baghdad
finally got around to reinstating the KRG budget that had been suspended since
2014, it reduced it from 17 to 12.5 percent.[5]
Despite its denunciations of the
United States and others for this disaster,[6] surely the KRG was partially
to blame. It had overreached and badly miscalculated in including Kirkuk and
other disputed territories in the referendum in an overly ambitious attempt to
unilaterally implement Iraqi Constitution Article 140 on the future of the
disputed city.[7] The
failure to put up even a fight for Kirkuk also illustrated continuing Kurdish
disunity despite the KRG’s existence since 1992 and further that the Kurds had
grossly over exaggerated their military power.[8] Despite the appearance of
military strength based on its success against ISIS, the KRG Peshmerga remained
divided between Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the late
Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). It also lacked heavy
weapons since Baghdad controlled what material Irbil received from foreign
states, and had achieved its recent victories only because of indispensable US
air support, which was lacking when Baghdad reclaimed Kirkuk.
However, since this setback to their
ambitions, the Iraqi Kurds have managed to recoup their fortunes and move
forward as a federal state within Iraq. Nechirvan Barzani became the new
president of the KRG, his cousin Masrour Barzani took his place as the new KRG
prime minister, while Barham Salih, a member of the PUK and former KRG prime
minister, became the new president of Iraq. It should be noted that the Iraqi
president is largely an honorary position as the real power in Iraq is held by
the prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi. Turkey has accepted this new situation
and a new calm has settled over relations between it and the Iraqi Kurds.
Turkey’s Syrian Crisis. As
the Kurdish crisis in Iraq gradually abated, the one in Syria suddenly
exploded, threatening to actually pit US troops against those of Turkey, its
supposed ally in NATO. This was because the US had armed and continued to support
the Syrian Kurdish-led and PKK-affiliated SDF/PYD/YPG forces against ISIS,
Kurdish forces, which Turkey viewed as an existential terrorist threat to its
territorial integrity. With the victory of these US-supported Kurdish forces
over ISIS by the end of 2017, the US drew further Turkish ire by announcing it
would train and support some 30,000 SDF troops as border guards.[9]
On January 20, 2018, Turkish troops with their
Syrian-opposition allies (the Free Syrian Army)—coordinating as Operation Olive
Branch—entered Afrin, the isolated third Syrian Kurdish canton on its border in
northwestern Syria and quickly occupied the region. No better illustration of
Turkey’s increasingly problematic policies in Syria existed than the spectacle
of Turkey, a US NATO ally, needing permission from Russia, NATO’s main
adversary, before acting. This was because Russia controlled the skies over the
Kurdish enclave and in effect had been partially protecting it as part of its
goal of preserving Syrian unity under its dictator, Hafez al-Assad. However,
now Russia decided not to oppose the Turkish incursion in support for Turkish
backing for Russia’s larger, overall aims in Syria such as weakening US
influence in Syria, pushing the Kurds to negotiate with Damascus, and strengthening
Russian-Turkish cooperation to the detriment of NATO.[10]
Of course, Turkish animus toward the Syrian Kurds was
nothing new, as earlier on August 26, 2016, Turkish troops had entered Syria to
the east of Afrin to prevent the Syrian Kurds from crossing the Euphrates River
and driving to the west of that waterway to unite with Afrin. At that time,
Operation Euphrates Shield managed to prevent these Kurdish ambitions. However,
despite US promises to its supposed NATO ally Turkey, the Syrian Kurds did not retreat
to the east of the river. The SDF continued to hold the city of Manbij on the
west side with US troops as advisors, whom the US said would stand their ground
against any Turkish offensive.[11]
Therefore, the possibility arose that US troops could
find themselves under direct attack from their NATO ally if Erdogan actually
carried out his promise to “strangle . . . before it is born” the US-backed SDF
border security force.[12] The
Turkish president even threatened that “we will rid Manbij of terrorists, as
was promised to us before. Our battles will continue until no terrorist is left
right up to our border with Iraq.”[13]
Exuding outrage in reference to the US support for the SDF, the Turkish
president also asked rhetorically, “How can a strategic partner do such a thing
to its strategic partner?”[14] He
even threatened to give the US troops “an Ottoman slap,”[15] employing
a Turkish saying for a deadly or incapacitating blow.
Erdogan, of course, did not actually want to attack US
forces. His real aim was probably to end US support for the SDF, collect the
weapons the group had received from the United States, and force the Kurds to
withdraw east of the Euphrates River. Probably even more importantly, his
bellicose attitude was intended for domestic consumption to boost his support
in Turkey for the snap presidential and parliamentary elections he suddenly
called and won on June 24, 2018. While the worst has so far been averted, it
was obvious that the two largest NATO armies were playing with fire in this
game of outrage and bluff. In addition, the U.S.-Turkish standoff threatened to
allow ISIS to begin reviving as well as emboldening such U.S. and NATO
adversaries as Russia, Iran, and Syria, among others.
Adding further fuel to their quarrel, Turkey and the
United States were also in serious confrontation over Turkey purchasing
Russia’s S-400 air defense system and the U.S. reacting by denying Turkey
previously promised new U.S. F-35 fighter jets. The United States even
threatened economic sanctions against Turkey that would bring it to its
financial knees.
Even more uncertainty arose when at the end of March 2018, U.S. president Donald J. Trump suddenly declared that the United States might soon pull all its approximately 2,000 troops out of Syria and ordered the State Department to suspend more than $200 million in civilian infrastructure and stabilization recovery funds for eastern (largely Kurdish) Syria.[16] This, of course, completely contradicted and confused the president’s top advisors—both fired and newly hired—as well as U.S. allies. Eventually, Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, tried to clarify the situation when he told reporters on August 17, 2018: “We’re remaining in Syria.”[17]
Furthermore,
in June 2018 the United States and Turkey reached an understanding for the
SDF/YPG forces to begin pulling out of Manbij and be replaced by separate,
coordinated US and Turkish patrols in the western side of the area.[18]
This agreement temporarily alleviated the possibility of a military clash
between the two NATO allies. Of course, this would only be a beginning
settlement as Turkey declared that the Manbij model eventually would also be
applied to Syria’s Raqqa, Kobane, and other important areas controlled by the
Syrian Kurdish PYD/YPG, a proposed roadmap likely to be opposed and rejected by
the Syrian Kurds. Thus, the onus would again fall upon the United States to
decide whether to support its de facto Syrian Kurdish ally or de jure Turkish
NATO ally. The long-term possibility of a US-Turkish military confrontation
remained.
Moreover, Trump compounded all this confusion when he
suddenly announced on December 19, 2018 that he had decided to withdraw from
Syria,[19]
apparently leaving the door open for Turkey, Syria, Russia, and Iran to move in
to the detriment of the Syrian Kurds. On the other hand, there was immediate
push back in the United States against Trump’s decision.[20] Secretary
of Defence James Mattis and Special Envoy to Counter ISIS Brett McGurk both
resigned in protest. The mercurial Trump soon partially reversed himself and
decided to keep a residual force of 400 US troops in Syria “for a period of
time.”[21]
The main reason Trump decided not to pull all the US
troops out of Syria was not to pay the Syrian Kurds back for their help against
ISIS, but because he rightly saw Iran in Syria as a serious threat to the US.
Iran already had extensive influence over many parts of the Middle East
including Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon. Thus, if Trump wanted to oppose Iranian ambitions
in the Middle East, he certainly had to stay in Syria or else he would be
handing Iran a huge victory by default. The United States was not likely to be
pulling out of Syria soon.
During
the summer of 2019, the United States and Turkey continued to dicker over
creating a safe zone in northeastern Syria that would allow Turkey to protect
its borders from the perceived threat of Syrian Kurdish SDF/YPG forces and
provide a secure place for some of the increasingly problematic 3.6 million
Syrian refugees in Turkey to return.[22] On
September 8, 2019, Turkey and the United States finally initiated their first
joint ground patrol in an apparently emerging safe zone on the Syrian side of
the border east of the Euphrates river near Tel Abyad.[23] The SDF
forces had withdrawn some nine miles from the border and removed their
defensive positions. However, the extent of the safe zone was uncertain.
Erdogan also remained dissatisfied, declaring, “It is clear that our ally [the
United States] is trying to create a safe zone for the terrorist organization
[the SDF/YPG], not for us.”[24]
Further complicating the situation, the Syrian government condemned the joint
patrol as “aggression.” For their part, the Syrian Kurds viewed Turkish moves
into northeastern Syria and previously Afrin to the west as ethnic cleansing by
replacing them with Syrian Arab refugees.
However, Trump’s
new announcement of a US troop withdrawal from Syria on October 7, 2019,[25]
has led to a major change in the situation by allowing Turkey finally to establish
a small safety zone stretching approximately 75 miles along the Syrian-Turkish
border between the cities of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn and maybe 20 miles deep.[26]
This has resulted in Moscow, Ankara, and the Assad regime apparently achieving
strategic gains, while the Syrian Kurds have experienced significant losses. In
the short run, Erdogan’s popularity in Turkey has soared, and he has regained
strength after his losses in the local elections held in March and June 2019.
However, it seems unlikely that Russia will permit Turkey to extend its safety
zone much further against the wishes of its Syrian ally who, of course, wants
to regain all its lost territory. Indeed, Turkey has only managed to enter
Syria with the permission of Russia. Thus, Turkey’s perceived gains from the US
withdrawal are only partial and may well be only temporary.
For its
part, the US also apparently has suffered potentially negative effects.[27]
1. By deserting its Syrian Kurdish ally, the US questions the value for others
supporting it in the future. Thus, the
US weakens itself. 2. Hundreds of imprisoned ISIS fighters escaped their Syrian
Kurdish guards who instead had to fight for their own survival. The result
might be an ISIS resurgence much as occurred earlier in Iraq when the US
withdrew from that state at the end of 2011. 3. The US actions have also
further hurt the NATO alliance by pushing Turkey into greater reliance on
Russia, NATO’s perceived foe. 4. Trump’s erratic behavior has also encouraged
Iran to solidify its position in Syria, where previously US troops had
partially checked the Islamic Republic’s move toward the Mediterranean. Of
course, only time will tell what the long-term results of the US withdrawal
will bring.
The Future. How
might one prevent further crises and even war, while maybe even through
intelligent diplomacy turn this Syrian morass toward peace? After all, most of
the jigsaw pieces were already present on the board game called Syria. First,
the United States should encourage Turkey to restart its peace process with the
PKK by removing it from the terrorist list. After all, one does not negotiate
with terrorists. The United States and the EU should also remove the PKK from
their terrorist lists. Such imaginative moves might encourage the PKK to
negotiate seriously. If not, Turkey could always return the PKK to the list.
This stop-and-go process might take time. Remember the Irish-English peace
agreement took more than 150 years to reach, and Brexit still threatens its
future. However, negotiating with the PKK was not a pipe dream because Turkey
had already done so from 2013-2015. Thus, the experience and building blocks
were already there for a renewed attempt.
Once Turkey did this, the PKK’s PYD
affiliate in Syria would no longer be perceived as such an existential threat.
Indeed, the Kurds need Turkey as it is the most powerful state in the region.
Far from being the Kurds’ sworn enemy, Turkey should see itself as the Kurds’
elder brother as indeed had begun occurring in northern Iraq until the ill-advised
independence referendum there in September 2017. If the renewed Turkish-PKK
peace process began to bear fruit, the U.S.-Turkish quarrel would diminish
because the two would no longer be supporting opposite sides in the
Turkish-Syrian Kurdish confrontation, at least to the extent that the US was
still supporting the Syrian Kurds. Such a more positive relationship might also
set the stage for an understanding on the S-400 issue and Russian meddling in
NATO’s affairs. As peace continued to return to Syria, the United States and
Iran should find reason to be less ready to strike each other. This might even
help set the stage for an overall U.S.-Iranian understanding that could avoid
the nightmare of a war between the two as threatened in June 2019 and still
does.
Further positive fallout from
unlocking the Syrian key might then lead Israel to feel less threatened by the
Syrian situation. No longer so militarily needed in Syria to preserve Assad,
Russia might find reason to be less threatening. By initiating a cascading
series of negotiations and understandings regarding Syria, the Syria Kurdish
foundling could unlock the door barring peace in the Middle East. Thus, as of this writing in November 2019, it remained unclear which
direction Turkish foreign policy in Syria, with all its many significant
aspects, would eventually turn. Furthermore, the broader Kurdish factor itself,
in all its many manifestations, promised to remain a major problem both for
Turkey’s domestic future as well as its foreign relations with the United
States and others in 2020.
[1] For background to the
Kurdish struggle, see David McDowall, A
Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd ed. (London: I.B. Tauris,
2004). For more recent events, see Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds: A Divided Nation in Search of a State, 3rd
ed. (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers,
2019).
[2] Michael Howard and
Suzanne Goldenberg, “US Arrest of Soldiers Infuriates Turkey,” The Independent, July 7, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jul/08/turkey.michaehoward,
accessed May 22, 2019.
[3]“92.7%
‘Yes’ for Independence: Preliminary Official Results,” Rudaw, September 27, 2017, http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/270920174,
accessed October 1, 2017.
[4] Fazel Hawramy, “Iran
Willing To Normalize Ties with KRG, but Not without Change,” Iran-Business News, December 23, 2017, www.iran-bn.com/2017/12/23/iran-willing-to-normalize-ties-with-krg/,
accessed December 26, 2017; and Baxtiyar Goran, “Najmaldin Karim: Warns of
Resurgence of Islamic State, Says US Supports Strong Kurdistan,” Kurdistan 24,
April 6, 2018, www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/eb87beb8-e379-4233-beee-b22bebf88a0d,
accessed April 10, 2018.
[5] Omar Sattar, “Iraqi
Budget Drives another Wedge between Baghdad, Kurds,” Al-Monitor, March 9, 2018, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/03/iraq-budget-kurdistan.html,
accessed March 12, 2018.
[6] See, for example,
“Barzani: No US ‘Support’ for Kurdish Referendum if Postponed,” Rudaw, November 11, 2017, http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/11112017,
accessed November 15, 2017.
[7] For background on
Kirkuk—which is both a city of some 1 million shared by Kurds (45 percent),
Arabs (38 percent), Turkmens (15 percent), and Christians (2 percent) and also
the surrounding governorate (province)—see Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield,
Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of
Conflict and Compromise (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2009). The recent “rough” population percentages were taken from David
Zucchino, “Iraqi Forces Retake All Oil Fields in Disputed Areas as Kurds
Retreat,” New York Times, October 17,
2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/world/middleeast/iraq-kurds-kirkuk.html,
accessed November 2, 2017.
[8] For further thoughts on
the KRG’s miscalculations, see Denise Natali, “Iraqi Kurdistan Was Never Ready
for Statehood,” Foreignpolicy.com,
October 31, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/31/iraqi-kurdistan-was-never-ready-for-statehood,
accessed November 15, 2017, among numerous other sources.
[9] Aymen Jawad al-Tamimi,
“Dispatch: The Syrian Democratic Forces’ Border Guards,” Middle East Forum, January
20, 2018, http://www.meforum.org/blog/2018/01/the-syrian-democratic-forces-border-guards,
accessed January 22, 2018.
[10] For background to the
evolving Turkish relationship with Russia, see Dmitry Shlapentokh, “The
Ankara-Moscow Relationship: The Role of Turkish Stream,” Middle East Policy 26 (Summer 2019), pp. 72- 84.
[11] Emre Peker and Julian E.
Barnes, “NATO to Try ‘Kitchen Table’ to Soothe U.S.-Turkey Dispute,” Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2018, http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-to-try-kitchen-table-to-soothe-u-s-turkey-dispute-1518354000,
accessed February 13, 2018.
[13] Cited in “Turkish
Operations in Syria to Reach up to Manbij and Iraqi border: Erdogan,” Hurriyet Daily News, January 26, 2016, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-operations-in-syria-to-reach-up-to-manbij-and-iraqi-border-erdogan-126331,
accessed January 28, 2018.
[15] Cited in “Muzzling the
Fourth Estate,” The Economist, March
3, 2018, p. 45. Some 16 Turkish newspapers featured this warning on their front
pages the next day! Ibid. “While unlikely, it is no longer inconceivable that
Turkey and the United States would one day be shooting at each other,” speculated
one close observer. Michael Rubin, “The US and Turkey Could Go To War,” Washington Examiner, April 17, 2018, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-us-and-turkey-could-go-to-war,
accessed April 15, 2018.
[16] Eric Schmitt, Helene
Cooper, and Alissa J. Rubin, “Trump Orders State Dept. to Suspend Funds for
Syria Recovery,” New York Times,
March 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/world/middleeast/syria-us-coaltion-deaths.html,
accessed April 2, 2018.
[17] Cited in Robin Wright,
“ISIS Makes a Comeback—As Trump Opts to Stay in Syria,” The New Yorker, August 30, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/isis-makes-a-comeback.
. . accessed September 2, 2018.
[18] “YPG Confirms Withdrawal
from Syria’s Manbij after Turkey-US Deal,” Aljazeera, June 5, 2018, https:///aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/ypg-confirms-wthdrawal-syria-manbij-turkey-deal-180605142952090.html,
accessed June 7, 2018.
[19] Ben Hubbard, “Syria’s
Kurds, Feeling Betrayed by the U.S., Ask Assad Government for Protection,” New York Times, December 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/middleeast/syria-kurds-turkey-manbij.html,
accessed, February 1, 2019.
[20] Brett McGurk, “Trump Said
He Beat ISIS. Instead, He’s Giving It New Life,” Washington Post, January 18, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-said-hed-stay-in-syria-to-beat-isis-instead-.
. . , accessed February 1, 2019.
[21] Jack Detsch, “Pentagon
Tries to Reassure Kurdish Allies amid Syria Pullout Confusion,” Al-Monitor, February 22, 2019, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/02/penagon-reassure-kurdish-alies-syria-pullout-confusion.html,
accessed March 1, 2019.
[22] Carlotta Gall, “U.S. and
Turkey Avoid Conflict by Agreeing on Buffer Zone in Syria,” New York Times, August 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/world/middleeast/us-turkey-peace-corridor-syria.html,
accessed August 16, 2019.
[23] Sarah El Deeb, “Turkey, US Conduct ‘Safe
Zone’ Joint Patrols in North Syria,” Washington
Post, September 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-us-begin-safe-zone-joint-patrols-in-north-syria.
. . accessed September 19, 2019.
[25] Peter Baker and Lara Jakes,
“Trump Throws Middle East Policy into Turmoil over Syria,” New York Times, October 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/turkey-syria-trump.html,
accessed October 7, 2019.
[26] Mona Yacoubian, “In
Syria, Russian-Turkish Deal Is a Game Changer on the Ground,” United States
Institute of Peace, October 23, 2019, https://www.usip.org/publications/2019/10/syria-russian-turkish-deal-game-changer-ground,
accessed October 24, 2019.
[27] Eric Schmitt and Helene
Cooper, “Hundreds of U.S. Troops Leaving, and Aso Arriving in, Syria,” New York Times, October 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/world/middleeast/us-troops-syria-trump.html,
accessed November 2, 2019.