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10\/8\/2019<\/span><\/p>\n Pushback to its proposed “peace corridor” plan in northern Syria has shown Turkey that there is a limit to how much it can do without stepping on Washington’s toes.<\/span><\/p>\n by <\/b>Matthew Petti*<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \n The United States is caught between its best partner against ISIS and the second-largest NATO army, as Turkey presses the United States for a foothold in northeastern Syria at the expense of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). But the impasse could end soon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After a tense week of negotiations, the U.S. embassy in Ankara issued a sanguine statement on Wednesday announcing an agreement on \u201cinitial measures to address Turkey\u2019s security concerns,\u201d the creation of a joint U.S.-Turkish operations center and efforts towards repatriating Syrian refugees.<\/span><\/p>\n Turkey\u2019s own defense minister, Hulusi Akar, announced that the negotiations have been \u201cconstructive\u201d and his U.S. counterparts have come \u201ccloser to our position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Public bluster by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has forced the United States to respond, but its demands may be tempered by geopolitical realities. And the U.S. Department of State, led by Special Envoy James Jeffrey, has pushed the SDF to accept concessions aiming to appease Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n Turkey accuses the SDF of backing Kurdish separatists within Turkey. Since the 1980s, the separatist uprising and state crackdown have killed tens of thousands of people, mostly in the Kurdish-majority southeastern corner of Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n \n On Sunday, Erdo\u011fan threatened a Turkish invasion<\/a> of the SDF-held territory east of the Euphrates, where two thousand U.S. troops are stationed as part of the fight against ISIS, warning that \u201cpatience has an end.\u201d And the Washington Post<\/i> reported on Monday that U.S. negotiators were making a \u201clast ditch<\/a>\u201d offer to remove all SDF forces and begin joint U.S.-Turkish patrols in an eight-seven-mile wide and nine-mile deep corridor along the Syrian-Turkish border.<\/span><\/p>\n The next day, the balance seemed to swing in the other direction. The Washington Post<\/i> had been told that the Trump administration does not claim the authority to defend the SDF by force, but Secretary of Defense Mark Esper threatened to \u201cprevent\u201d<\/a> any \u201cunilateral incursion\u201d by Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen I started my job as an analyst at the Washington Institute nearly two decades ago, I would say the U.S. military was Turkey’s biggest friend in Washington. Now it is Turkey\u2019s biggest adversary,\u201d said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, citing divergences in Iraq and Syria policy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn the discussions with Turkey, the U.S. has made it clear that the SDF will manage northern and eastern Syria for the foreseeable future,\u201d Nicholas Heras, a Center for a New American Security fellow with direct knowledge of the talks told the National Interest<\/i>. \u201cIt\u2019s a slow walk toward a U.S. chaperoned Turkish presence east of the Euphrates.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \n Bassam Ishak, the Syrian Democratic Council\u2019s diplomat in Washington, told the National Interest<\/i> that the current agreement is ambiguous, but set down the SDF\u2019s red lines for its interpretation. He said that the SDF may accept a \u201cTurkish presence in patrols\u201d but not a \u201cstationary Turkish presence\u201d in any future safe zone, and that \u201cit is not acceptable\u201d for Turkey to move \u201cjihadi\u201d proxies into the area.<\/span><\/p>\n A few hours after the U.S. embassy\u2019s announcement, Loqman Ehme, a spokesperson for the SDF-aligned Autonomous Administration declared via semi-official media<\/a> that \u201cJames Jeffrey also said that they won\u2019t impose anything the North and East Syrian Administration won\u2019t accept.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \n He added that any safe zone \u201cmust be governed by the region\u2019s own people, execution must be local and migrated persons must return to rebuild their life. Our territory fulfills all three conditions. Our zones are safe zones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cJim Jeffrey seems to have accepted that a limited safe zone would not derail U.S. efforts, the last-ditch efforts to defeat ISIS, but the only way we can really see this work is if the SDF and the YPG clearly agree to some sort of Turkish involvement here in the north,\u201d said Merve Tahiro\u011flu, an analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, referring to the People\u2019s Defense Units (YPG) that form the core of the SDF.<\/span><\/p>\n A \u201cchaperoned\u201d Turkish presence alongside the SDF would be is a significant step down from Erdo\u011fan\u2019s previous demand<\/a> for a twenty-mile deep Turkish-run \u201csafe zone\u201d free of the SDF along the entire 290-mile border.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat Turkey wants is not to take over the whole area, but to cut into it with narrow belts of five to ten mile width, trying to reach down to the highway twenty miles down so that this is not a contiguous YPG entity, but it’s broken into two or three pieces,\u201d Cagaptay told the National Interest<\/i>, mentioning the central M5 road as a core Turkish objective.<\/span><\/p>\n If Turkey took the whole territory, then \u201cthere would be both exodus of Kurds and also an insurgency afterwards, which is why I think Turkey\u2019s goal is not to go for big cities, because it would risk urban insurgency in the aftermath, and not go for Kurdish-majority areas, but really keep it small at the time being for Arab-majority areas,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n After months of threatening the SDF, Turkey invaded the SDF-held district of Afrin in January 2018. By the end of the grueling campaign in April, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 137,000 people had fled the Kurdish-majority region, compared to the 150,000 who remained. Turkish-backed forces have reportedly forcibly displaced<\/a> even more since. More than a year later, the SDF-backed insurgency is still festering<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Ehme\u2019s Wednesday declaration demanded an end to \u201cinvasion, pillaging and tyranny in Afrin\u201d as a condition for any safe zone.<\/span><\/p>\n With its safe zone proposal, Turkey is \u201ccertainly looking to remove the YPG political leadership and military leadership from the town of Kobani and Tel Abyad,\u201d Tahiro\u011flu said, \u201cso in that sense it will be similar to what it did in Afrin, but I don’t think they’re looking for a medium to long-term occupation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to the costs of a violent invasion, the risk of a U.S.-Turkish military confrontation has held Turkey back. Unlike in Afrin, the SDF-held territory east of the Euphrates hosts two thousand U.S. troops in the fight against ISIS.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unimaginable for two NATO allies to get into such a position,\u201d Tahiro\u011flu told the National Interest<\/i>. \u201cI\u2019d like to believe that despite all of the problems in the bilateral relationship, this is still a step too far for Turkey.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGiven that there is CAATSA sanctions looming, and Trump\u2019s personal talks with Erdogan on that matter, it seems like Trump is trying to use that as leverage to get Turkey to nudge a little,\u201d she said, referring to the Countering America\u2019s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017. Under the new law, Turkey\u2019s recent purchase of S-400 air defense missiles from Russia should have triggered sanctions, but President Donald Trump has pushed back against Congress<\/a> in implementing them immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n The practical realities of the fight against ISIS have also restrained Turkish actions against the SDF. The SDF is currently holding ten thousand ISIS prisoners<\/a> at the infamous Hawl camp. For the SDF to abandon the fight against ISIS and jeopardize the stability of former ISIS territory, in order to defend against Turkey, would be a \u201cdisastrous outcome,\u201d Tahiro\u011flu claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n Destabilizing former ISIS territories further would work against the return of refugees, one of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s primary goals in demanding a safe zone. Turkey currently hosts around 3.6 million Syrians. A worsening economy and losses for Turkey\u2019s ruling party have soured public opinion towards the Syrian population, and Turkish authorities have begun deporting tens of thousands<\/a> to the Turkish-occupied areas of Syria, including Afrin.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a rare issue that unites most of Turkey\u2019s citizens that are otherwise divided into anti- and pro-Erdo\u011fan camps,\u201d Cagaptay said. \u201cSo, he\u2019s going everything that he can to make sure that the safe zone is large enough that he can accommodate more than a few hundred thousand, perhaps more than a million refugees.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ishak told the National Interest<\/i> that it would be unacceptable to the SDF for Turkey to repatriate Syrian refugees to \u201cchange the demography of the region according to [Turkish] wishes and interests.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n