News Analysis: Turkey takes tough steps to curb Kurds in northern Syria

Turkey has taken tough steps to stem the momentum of the Kurds in northern Syria, as a powerful Kurdish presence would be a nightmare to Turkey, analysts here said.

After staying idle for over two years toward the flow of foreign fighters into Syria through its territories, the Turkish government suddenly declared its war on the Islamic State (IS) militants in a stretch of Syrian territory near the Turkish borders, citing a deadly explosion that rocked the Turkish town of Suruc in south-eastern Turkey, near the border with Syria, which killed at least 30 people and was later blamed on the IS.

Even though, the Suruc explosion seemed like a reasonable motive behind the sudden Turkish shift toward the expanding terrorism, Syrian analysts say that the explosion could be Turkey's motive to personally involve in the course of actions in northern Syria, by hitting the IS while at the same time use that as a cover to halt the Kurdish progress on the Syrian-Turkish borders, especially that the IS sway along the borders is shrinking in favor of the Kurds.

The Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG) have been making strides in their battle against the IS in predominantly-Kurdish areas in northern Syria along the borderline with Turkey.

The Kurdish progress in that area has apparently raised the ire of the Turkish government and sparked fears in Ankara that the Kurds are working to connect areas where they have weight in northern Syria, which could usher in the establishment of a Kurdish state, especially that the Kurds in northern Syria have already established a kind-of autonomy.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country Turkey will never allow the establishment of a Kurdish state in Syria, accusing Kurdish fighters of ethnically cleansing non-Kurdish communities from land they have taken after pushing back the IS militants.

The Kurds denied the accusation about the "ethnic cleansing" as a Turkish move to tarnish the Kurds among the Arab communities in northern Syria. However, they didn't deny their reported intention to connect areas they control in the far northeast of Syria to the far northwest, meaning areas with Kurdish population along the Turkish borders.

Some of the areas between the northeast and the northwest are controlled by the IS.

The Turks started shelling the IS positions in the IS-controlled areas that are eyed by the Kurds. Turkish government said it was fighting IS, but said it's preparing this stretch of land to be an IS-free area that will enable Turkey to return some 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to this safe, protected area, which means cutting the road before the Kurds can take them.

"I think there is no actual change in the stance of Turkey toward the IS or what is going on in Syria," Ibrahim Haj Abdi, a Kurdish journalist and political researcher, told Xinhua.

He said that Turkey, in parallel with striking IS in Syria, has simultaneously struck positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, which backs the Syrian Kurdish YPG group, which in turn battles the IS.

"How could they strike a Kurdish group that has proven efficiency in battling IS, which the Turks are currently attacking?" Abdi said, noting that "there is only one explanation that Turkey deems the Kurds and IS as terrorists and I think it fears the establishment of a Kurdish state more than the establishment of an Islamic State led by ultra-radicals."

Another reason why Turkey wants to curb a Kurdish influence on its borders, Abdi said, was the winning of the pro-Kurds Peoples' Democratic Party in Turkey (HDP) around 80 seats in this year's Turkish parliament elections, which was seen as another factor to empower the Kurdish position.

For his part, Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog group, said that "the interference of the Turks will stop any progress of the Kurds and will halt the Kurdish attempts to connect areas of Kurdish influence with one another."

"The Turks fear the Kurds could control all of the borderline between Syria and Turkey and that's why Turkey has trained Turkish militiamen to take control of the border areas," apparently after the IS is dislodged and after the establishment of the planned safe zone, he said.

Abdul-Rahman expressed astonishment, saying "how could the one that allowed 50,000 radical militants into Syria become suddenly an enemy to IS."

Even the Syrian government has questioned the sudden shift in the Turkish stance toward IS.

"True that better come late than never, but are the Turkish intentions honest about countering terrorism and the terrorist groups, or they are just taking this as a pretext to target the Kurds in Syria?" the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

Other analysts say that if the Kurds in Syria managed to have a united autonomy akin to that which was established in Iraq after the downfall of previous Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain, the Kurds in Turkey could be emboldened to take the same path toward splitting from Turkey.

Now the Syrian Kurds are working to consolidate their autonomy, after the Iraqi Kurds became in control of the Kurdistan Region, an autonomous region of Iraq that borders the Kurdish regions of Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Syria to the west.

The Kurds in Turkey count at about 14 million out of 77.8 million Turkish people, and any separatist aspiration could drown Turkey into the quagmire of chaos, which explains the Turkish government fears of another independent Kurdish state in Syria, particularly after the growing power of the pro-Kurdish group in the Turkish parliament.

Kurdish experts say even though the Kurds are seemingly working to establish their independence, but for now they are only protecting their areas, no further plans are declared yet. Endit