Mercy Corps provides aid to around 500,000 people inside Syria each monthCredit: AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
Turkey’s government has abruptly forced a major international aid organisation to stop working to help Syrian refugees in Turkish territory.
Mercy Corps, one of the world’s largest humanitarian groups, was informed by the Turkish interior ministry that it no longer had permission to work in Turkey and must shut down its operations.
The aid group said Turkey gave no reason for the sudden halt and that it had been working from Turkey in close cooperation with the government since 2012.
“Our hearts are broken by this turn of events, which comes after five years of cooperation with the government of Turkey and other local partners,” Mercy Corps said.
Turkey has taken in around 3 million Syrians since 2011Credit: Sam Tarling/Telegraph
Turkey’s government has shut down hundreds of NGOs since a failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July 2016, often claiming that the groups had links to terror groups.
Critics of Mr Erdoğan say he has used the coup as an excuse to crack down on civil society and stifle dissenting voices.
The Turkish press has carried allegations against Mercy Corps and other international groups in recent months, claiming that the NGOs were supporting armed groups against Turkey’s government.
Mercy Corps strongly denies the charges and says it is a strictly non-political group.
“We have every confidence in the impartiality and the integrity of our operations. We’re not a political organisation and our reason for being is to deliver assistance to civilians who need it the most,” said Christine Nyirjesy Bragale, the group’s director of media relations.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a meeting in IstanbulCredit: AP
Turkey’s government has not commented publicly on the closure.
Mercy Corps said the decision would not stop it from delivering aid to civilians inside Syria but would prevent it from helping the roughly 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.
The group receives funding from the US, UK and EU and says it spent $34 million (£28 million) in Turkey in 2016.
“Our priority right now is to limit any adverse effects our departure from Turkey may have on the innocent men, women and children who depend on our assistance,” the group said.
The decision has forced Mercy Corps to lay off its Turkish staff and send its international staff home. The group said it was hopeful to open “a dialogue” with Turkey and receive permission to resume its operations soon.
Buffer zones set up to prevent assault on Kurdish-held town
Putin to meet Erdogan, Netanyahu this week as battle spreads
A convoy of US armored vehicles near the village of Yalanli, in Manbij, on March 5.Photographer: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. and Russia have found themselves teaming up for the first time in the war in Syria — against a country both call an ally: Turkey.
The U.S. and Russia moved this week to block a threatened drive by Turkey to seize Manbij, a town in northern Syria about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Turkish border. A U.S. deployment and a Russian-brokered deal with Syrian forces created buffer zones that headed off any Turkish campaign against the Kurdish forces who hold the town — seen by Washington as key allies against Islamic State and by Turkey as terrorists.
As the outside powers fighting in Syria step up the fight to crush Islamic State, the battle is laying bare their often-conflicting loyalties. With all sides pushing into terrorist-held territory, the potential for clashes between the players is rising.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a central player thanks to his military campaign, but he must keep allies like Syria and Iran on his side even as tries to cooperate with the U.S. and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes to Moscow on Thursday with his defense minister for talks with Putin.
“This is a unique circumstance when the U.S. and Russia have found themselves thrown together against Turkey because of the Kurds, who are directly sponsored by Washington and get Russian support too,” said Alexander Shumilin, head of the Middle East Conflict Center at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, a government-run research group in Moscow.
‘Flag Competition’
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his country was seeking a “trilateral mechanism” to clear the area of “terrorist groups.” In Manbij, “the U.S. is raising a flag, Russia is raising a flag nearby, things have turned into a flag competition,” Yildirim said in an interview with ATV television.
Later on Tuesday, Yildirim said countries operating in Syria must coordinate their actions to eliminate all terrorist groups. Last week, Turkey vowed to capture Manbij if the U.S. didn’t clear out the Kurdish fighters who control it.
“Turkey told its counterparts that no terror group can be destroyed by using another terror group,” he said in Ankara. “If coordination can’t be established, then there could be a risk of confrontation, which we do not wish for.”
The standoff has emerged as Russia has taken the diplomatic lead in seeking to resolve the war in Syria after its air campaign that started in 2015 bolstered President Bashar al-Assad.
Under pressure in Washington over allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, President Donald Trump has backed off his campaign pledge to cooperate on fighting terrorism in Syria with Putin. Still, U.S. warplanes helped indirectly in the Russian-backed Syrian offensive to recapture the historic city of Palmyra last month, carrying out 23 strikes over nine days, as much as during the rest of February. Now, on Turkey, the two powers appear to have taken a tactical joint stance.
In a bid to lower the tensions, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Turkey’s Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar met in the southern Turkish city of Antalya on Tuesday.
‘Dangerous Situation’
“It is a measure of the success that forces are having in countering the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that the conversation is necessary,” the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement. It noted that areas like Manbij have become “a crowded battlespace” and the proximity of the various forces had created “a dangerous situation.”
Turkey sent troops across the border into Syria in August, backing Free Syrian Army rebels in battles against Islamic State. The army has also clashed with Kurdish forces that the government in Ankara regards as terrorists with links to separatists in Turkey, who took control of Manbij after expelling Islamic State just before the Turkish incursion.
Risk Remains
Full-scale hostilities between the Turks and Kurds would deal a major setback to efforts to capture Raqqa, according to Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s important to get a buffer between the Turks and Kurds so ISIS can be beaten,” he said.
The U.S. has moved 500 soldiers to the outskirts of Manbij, according to Ilnur Cevik, chief adviser to Erdogan. The U.S.-led coalition “has taken this deliberate action to reassure coalition members and partner forces, deter aggression and keep the focus on defeating ISIS,” spokesman Colonel John Dorrian said on Twitter.
The U.S. and Russian moves leave Turkey with “no more room to maneuver,” said Faysal Itani, an analyst with the Atlantic Council in Washington. That will enable a Kurdish-led operation to capture Raqqa and the Syrian government to deploy its forces, too, in the area, he said.
“What Turkey is experiencing with its allies in the West is traumatic,” Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said Wednesday as he lashed out against the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurdish forces. “We do hope the Trump administration will have a better understanding of Turkey’s concerns.”
Ankara faces a number of foreign policy challenges, from the war in Syria to relations with the West. In each case, Turkey’s options are determined by domestic priorities.
As citizens of Turkey head to a crucial vote on April 16 on whether to adopt a new constitution, the country’s leadership is facing multiple challenges on the external front: Syria, Russia, the United States, NATO, and the EU. Typically, each of these challenges is closely linked to Turkey’s tense domestic political situation.
With Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkish armed forces are involved in Syria in a rare expeditionary combat mission. Albeit geographically limited (no troops or armor are more than 19 miles from the Turkish border, meaning all resupply, maintenance, and rescue operations are completed within hours), the mission has already taken a substantial toll on soldiers and equipment.
Marc Pierini
Visiting Scholar
Carnegie Europe
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@MarcPierini1
Euphrates Shield is officially designed to fight troops of the self-styled Islamic State and push them away from the Turkish border. This goal has been partly achieved, including through Turkey’s proclaimed capture of the Syrian town of al-Bab on February 24. But the actual aim of the mission is to prevent Syrian Kurdish forces (the People’s Protection Units, or YPG) from reuniting their Kobane district, east of the Euphrates River, with their westernmost district of Afrin, as that would give the Syrian Kurds control of most of the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara’s narrative is that both branches of the Syrian Kurdish organization—the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG, its military wing—are mere subsidiaries of the Kurdish separatist movement of Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
This is where foreign policy blends with domestic politics. To succeed in its current domestic strategy of crushing both the pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the insurgent PKK to win the upcoming referendum, given the Kurds’ opposition to the proposed constitution, the leadership in Ankara needs international support. That implies convincing Russia and Western powers to drop their support for the Syrian Kurds.
But the reality on the international scene is very different. Both Washington and Moscow crucially rely on the YPG to advance on Raqqa, the so-called Syrian capital of the Islamic State. The YPG troops are remarkably effective and have received military supplies and operational support from the United States and other Western countries. They are also supported by Moscow.
More importantly, in the current proxy war against the Islamic State, the YPG forces are by far the most battle ready and the most successful in combat. Retaking Raqqa without the YPG, as Turkey is demanding, is next to impossible. Neither Washington nor Moscow is likely to risk mixing Syrian Kurdish forces with Turkish troops, a recipe for inevitable trouble and possible failure on the ground.
Ankara is replicating its request on the political front and wants to exclude the Syrian Kurds from the international talks on Syria that have just restarted in Geneva. This, again, is almost impossible, as Washington has consistently argued in favor of their involvement for the sake of lasting peace in northern Syria. Ankara is probably betting on a policy reversal by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—although, as with other U.S. foreign policy choices, the White House’s next move is anybody’s guess.
In addition, Turkey will face Moscow’s opposition, because Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly stated in September 2015 Russia’s desire to see the Syrian Kurds as one of the pillars of a political settlement. In other words, Ankara faces two major challenges in Syria: a military and a political one.
Yet, Turkey repeatedly boasts about its military operation on Syrian territory and its participation in direct talks on Syria with both Russia and Iran. Turkey has consistently aimed at restoring close cooperation with Russia since a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi aircraft in November 2015 and an off-duty Turkish policeman assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey in the heart of Ankara in December 2016. This reconciliation has been achieved in part, allowing Turkey to break the diplomatic isolation that followed the extensive repression after the July 2016 failed coup and entertain a proud nationalist narrative internally.
However, seen from abroad, Turkey’s foreign military operation and its diplomatic successes are rather limited and offset by risks taken along the way. In particular, the question arises of whether Ankara has become a pawn in Moscow’s vast chess game aimed at systematically undermining both NATO and the EU, especially in defense and energy.
The Turkish minister of defense declared on February 22 that discussions on the purchase of Russian S400 missiles for Turkey’s antimissile defense were progressing well, which was revealing of the country’s current foreign policy conundrum. If Ankara were to build its entire missile defense architecture around Russian systems, it would associate itself with Moscow and strike two major blows to NATO’s policies: first, by introducing Russian-made systems and accompanying experts into NATO’s second-largest conventional army; and second, by leaving a gaping hole in NATO’s own missile defense shield, to which Turkey has repeatedly committed itself.
One can easily comprehend Ankara’s tactical appetite for such a move, but its strategic implications would be of unfathomable depth, especially if a yes vote in the upcoming referendum gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan almost unlimited powers until 2029.
In comparison with these strategic stakes, Turkey’s relationship with the EU now looks almost benign, although greatly significant on the economic and rule-of-law fronts. With the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup, Turkey’s rule-of-law architecture has been so degraded that no progress on the country’s EU accession talks can realistically be expected. Similarly, steps toward visa liberalization—a mutually desirable objective—are impeded by Turkey’s firm priority to keep its antiterrorism law as it is.
Again, a yes vote in the referendum is likely to result in an almost permanent state of emergency and minimal rule-of-law standards. That is nothing that would worry Moscow much, but it would bring the EU-Turkey relationship to a transactional rather than a strategic level. A modernized EU-Turkey Customs Union is likely to become the only flagship project between Turkey and the EU.
All politics are local: Turkey’s current foreign policy choices are dictated by domestic political imperatives. Ankara’s foreign military operations and postures, as well as a key defense decision and deliberate backtracking on progress toward EU membership, are only parts of an internal power drive. The likely winner: Putin, more than Erdoğan.
For special access to experts and other members of the national security community, check out new the War on the Rocks membership.
After months of halting and costly progress, the Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels are in a good position to take the Syrian city of al-Bab from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). With the capture of al-Bab, Turkey will have accomplished the clearly defined goals of its “Operation Euphrates Shield” intervention in northern Aleppo governorate: driving ISIL from the Turkish border and blocking hostile Kurdish forces from linking their territory to Turkey’s south.
But after al-Bab, Euphrates Shield has nowhere to go, and, if Turkey’s gains are to be sustainable, its forces may be unable to leave. With Euphrates Shield, Turkey may have thrown itself into a Syrian quagmire. It has no clear exit strategy and only a poor set of options for escalation. Turkey seems committed to an indefinite but precarious occupation of a piece of northern Aleppo governorate that, perversely, may further weaken Syria’s political and territorial integrity and strengthen Turkey’s adversaries.
The Syrian regime is poised to take Tadif from ISIL, while al-Bab will likely fall to the Turkish military and Syrian rebels. (SyrianCivilWarMap.com, February 2017)
Where to After al-Bab?
The Turkish government has not announced a plan to govern the territory it now controls in Syria or to transfer power to a civilian authority capable of administering services in war-torn Syria. Instead, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently signaled his intention to expand the operation to target the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the People’s’ Protection Units (YPG). The YPG is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish-led militia that has waged an insurgent campaign in southeast Turkey since 1984. The YPG also acts as the backbone of the SDF, the United States’ closest partner in the Syrian conflict. This proposal, it seems, is part of a Turkish effort to create a 5,000-square kilometer “safe zone” free of the Islamic State and the YPG. This zone would include both Manbij and Afrin, two well-defended YPG and SDF-controlled areas along the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkey’s actions after al-Bab falls could have considerable implications for the ongoing American-backed SDF offensive north of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s administrative hub in Syria. A Turkish offensive against Manbij, for example, would force the YPG to move forces from the outskirts of Raqqa, perhaps delaying a planned offensive against the city. The Turkish military could expand its operations after al-Bab, but its potential adversaries are prepared to defend against a Turkish-backed assault. The defenses are similar to those that have slowed Turkey’s operations around al-Bab, risking another set of bloody battles for Syrian cities without any coherent mechanism to govern and then withdraw from territory taken.
The risks of a prolonged Turkish occupation are considerable. Turkey’s difficulties around al-Bab have also allowed for the Syrian Arab Army and allied militias, backed by Russian airstrikes, to push east from Aleppo City. The Syrian Arab Army and its allies are now in control of the high ground overlooking the main road connecting al-Bab with Raqqa, effectively blocking any Turkish offensive toward Raqqa. At the time of writing, the Turkish and Syrian armies appear to be pushing to take the same city, Tadif, although Russia may have succeeded in brokering a ceasefire along the dividing line between northern Tadif and the southern entrance to al-Bab.
Turkey and its rebel allies are slowly advancing in al-Bab, and will eventually push ISIL out of the city. To the south, regime forces have pushed towards Tadif and have cut the al-Bab/Raqqa road, rendering a Turkish offensive towards Raqqa unlikely. (SyrianCivilWarMap.com, February 2017)
The division of territory has temporarily calmed tensions around the city, but the reality is that Turkish forces and a coalition of loosely aligned proxy militias now share a frontline with the Syrian regime, embedded Russian advisers, and Alawite militias. These two fractious coalitions are now within mortar range of one another, a state of affairs that is inherently destabilizing.
Further still, the regime’s advance south of al-Bab limits Turkey’s options and all but rules out any potential Turkish plan to expand Operation Euphrates Shield to push south toward Raqqa. Ankara had previously touted this proposal to U.S. officials and to the international media as an alternative to a SDF-led offensive for the ISIL-held city. Now, Turkish forces could only do this if they were willing to fight through the Russian-backed regime positions to the south of al-Bab and then come back into contact with ISIL on the outskirts of Raqqa. As this would trigger open war with the Syrian regime, it seems like an unlikely path for Turkey. Instead, Turkish forces could still seek to expand operations around Tel Rifaat or Manbij, two cities Turkey has occasionally pledged to target as part of Euphrates Shield.
The Tel Rifaat Offensive: Turkish Options and Limitations
In the northwest of Syria, the YPG holds the Afrin canton, a mountainous and largely Kurdish area abutting the Turkish-held territory in Syria. One option, often floated by Syrian rebels and the Turkish government, is an assault on the YPG in Afrin to capture Tel Rifaat, an Arab-majority town near the western border.
A rebel offensive on Tel Rifaat (Tall Rif’at) in Afrin would involve an attack along the entire frontline south of A’zaz. (SyrianCivilWarMap.com, February 2016)
Tel Rifaat has been under YPG control since February 2016, when the group captured it from rebels with the support of the Russian and Syrian air forces. The Syrian rebels are therefore motivated and willing to fight the YPG in this area. The Turkish military and its rebel allies have clashed with YPG in the past around Tel Rifaat. On October 22, 2016, Free Syrian Army factions, backed by Turkish air and artillery strikes, began their assault on the town, but were pushed back. Three days later, Turkish-backed rebels lost two villages southeast of Tel Rifaat to a YPG counterattack.
Unlike the rebels of Operation Euphrates Shield, who have been constantly fighting ISIL since March 2016, the YPG in Afrin is well-rested and has largely not been involved in the grueling back-and-forth civil war. Turkish-backed rebels have a manpower deficit. They are heavily dependent on poorly trained fighters recruited from Syrian refugee populations in Turkey, local fighters from northern Aleppo, and some rebels who moved from Idlib. While these manpower sources would be appropriate for administering a smaller sized territory, they have been significantly depleted by the recent internecine conflict in Idlib and years of battle with ISIL and the Syrian regime. This manpower deficit would complicate any attack on Tel Rifaat. With over 175 kilometers of militarized frontline to defend, Syrian rebels would have to mass their forces in one area for an offensive without leaving other frontlines dangerously undefended from an Islamic State counter attack, SDF forces outside of Manbij, or regime forces south of al Bab. The Afrin YPG has a much shorter frontline to defend, so they can bring more forces to bear if needed.
The YPG has been expecting a rebel offensive to retake Tel Rifaat ever since it captured the town in early 2016. The YPG and its SDF allies have spent over a year building up defensive fortifications, such as earthen berms, checkpoints, and trenches. Afrin now has some of the most extensive defensive fortifications seen in northern Syria, similar to those ISIL employed to great effect to slow the Turkish-backed offensive on the al-Bab’s western entrances.
A satellite image of the defenses surrounding Sheikh Issa, one of the satellite towns that Euphrates Shield would have to take before reaching the Tel Rifaat defensive lines. (Terraserver, November 2016)
Tel Rifaat’s extensive defensive network, consisting of a web of walls and fortified towns, would impose costs on advancing Turkish forces, risking a prolonged campaign to take the city. With the Afrin YPG, Russia, and the Syrian regime in a tacit alliance, Turkey and its rebel allies may end up facing off with YPG ground forces backed up by two air forces if they attack and risk escalation with Russia or the Syrian regime. Russia and the regime have already demonstrated a commitment to use force in the area, even when Syrian troops are within mortar range of Turkish soldiers. A Russian airstrike killed 3 Turkish soldiers in February, while a second strike, attributed at various times to Russian, regime, or Iranian air assets, also killed Turkish soldiers operating near al-Bab in late November 2016.
Consolidating the Eastern Flank: Options for Manbij
South of al-Bab, the Syrian regime, backed by Russian airstrikes, have advanced to within 1.5 kilometers of the city. Regime forces now share a 10 kilometer-long frontline with Turkish-backed forces on the city’s southwestern outskirts. This Syrian move threatens to link its frontline just south of Tadif with SDF-held positions west of Manbij, potentially creating an alternative route to link SDF-held territory with Afrin, south of al-Bab. This would undermine the intended goal of Euphrates Shield of preventing the formation of a contiguous Kurdish region in Syria. The Syrian regime could use this as a point of leverage with the YPG in future peace negotiations, and Russia is working to facilitate this course of action with various Kurdish and regime interlocutors.
The Syrian Regime and the Manbij YPG could easily launch a coordinated offensive against ISIL, cutting off Turkey’s route for expansion. With this, the YPG could effectively connect Manbij to Afrin using Syrian regime territory following Russian-facilitated negotiations with the regime. (SyrianCivilWarMap.com, February 2017)
To prevent this, Turkey could choose to launch an offensive against SDF territory to the east of rebel-held northern Aleppo governorate. The end goal of such an operation would be to take Manbij, a city that the SDF, backed by U.S. airstrikes and special operations forces, captured from ISIL after a nearly three month-long battle and siege in summer of 2016.
Turkey has fought the SDF in this area before. At the start of Euphrates Shield, the Turkish and rebel forces rapidly pushed the YPG and their SDF allies back north of the Sajur River in a surprise offensive. With the Sajur River forming a natural boundary between the Manbij YPG and the Euphrates Shield forces, an American-backed ceasefire was put in place and has worked to minimize violence along the tense front line.
Some three months later, the situation has changed significantly. The YPG and SDF have dug in and fortified their positions, so Turkish armor and rebel infantry will not be able to rapidly advance as they did at the start of the operation. Political considerations also play a role in making a large-scale Turkish operation against the YPG in this area unlikely. Unlike the Afrin YPG, who cooperate extensively with the Syrian regime and Russia, the YPG and SDF in this region have a close working relationship with the United States and shared goals of pushing ISIL out of northern Syria.
To the east of the Euphrates River and Manbij, the YPG and its Arab allies in the SDF are preparing for an operation targeting Raqqa. American support in the form of arms, air support, and embedded special operations forces will be key to the capture of the city, but the operation is expected to rely heavily on local Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces.
A Turkish-led attack on Manbij would slow the Raqqa operation, as YPG forces would likely move from Raqqa to defend the frontlines in Manbij. Turkish President Erdogan has sought to offer an alternative option for taking Raqqa that would involve Euphrates Shield forces, rather than the Kurdish YPG and Arab SDF. However, the Turkish military and its allied rebels have struggled to capture al-Bab, a city with a pre-war population of only 63,000. Raqqa is nearly four times larger and sits some 180 kilometers south of the current Turkish-held frontline. An offensive against it would require more troops and more complicated and exposed logistical chain, independent of the capabilities of the local partners.
Turkey has one other option: It could invade Tel Abyad, an SDF-held town. Turkey will retain this option indefinitely, but actually pursuing it would entangle Turkish military forces on third front in Syria’s multi-sided civil war. Moreover, taking territory from Kurdish forces in Tel Abyad would likely boomerang back into Turkey, resulting in cross-border YPG attacks against various Turkish targets along the border.
Turkey’s final option is to launch a major military operation on Tall Abyad, clearing out the YPG and SDF, then proceeding to Raqqa. This option will lead to open warfare between the YPG and the Turkish government along the Syrian border and would be a major escalation of Turkish involvement in Syria. (SyrianCivilWarMap.com, February 2017)
Boxed In: So, Now What?
The Turkish government has repeatedly stated that it does not intend to stay in Syria in the long term. However, a premature withdrawal may leave the Euphrates Shield rebels weak and ill-equipped to deal with threats from the YPG or the Syrian regime, both of whom have clashed with the rebels in the past.
Prior to the Turkish intervention, the rebels that now constitute Euphrates Shield struggled to defend territory against ISIL attacks. They were nearly wiped out in an ISIL offensive on the city of Marea in the 2016. The Turkish forces will have to reorganize the rebel forces, currently split into dozens of factions, into a force that can independently defend its territory.
Turkey faces a similar problem as other professional militaries that work with local partners to take territory on the battlefield. Tensions between Islamist rebels and less conservative Free Syrian Army factions have often resulted in tit-for-tat kidnappings. Increasingly, internecine warfare breaks out over control of trade revenues and smuggling in Turkish-held territory in Syria. Some Turkish citizens, members of Turkish nationalist groups, have joined the rebel fray in Syria, creating tensions between the conservative and often Arabized Syrian Turkmen and the less religious nationalist Turkish volunteers. The Turkish military presence in Syria has suppressed these tensions for the most part, but they are likely to return once the Turkish military withdraws.
In addition to reorganizing the rebels into an independent and effective fighting force, Turkey faces the challenge of supporting the creation of a unified governing structure across the northern Aleppo governorate rebel territory. Currently governance in the area is split between a mishmash of disconnected and often conflicting sharia courts, civilian-led city councils, rebel militias, and Turkish forces, all operating with little overarching framework. Turkey will have to turn its attention to building institutions to govern the northern Aleppo territory, a slow and complex process with no clear timeframe. Turkey will therefore have to consolidate control over territory taken, regardless of the military choices it makes, either near Tel Rifaat or Manbij.
The consolidation of Turkish-backed governing bodies, while necessary to create the conditions to withdraw, may also contribute to an outcome Ankara has worked to prevent: the decentralization and devolution of the Syrian state, as regional institutions are strengthened at the expense of the central government. This outcome would also help to strengthen the case for empowered local regions, which would benefit the Syrian Kurds’ political aspirations. That said, the decentralization of the Syrian state may now be inevitable regardless of Turkish action.
Turkey will soon achieve its narrowly defined military objective: the defeat of ISIL in al-Bab to ensure that Kurdish-held territory along the Turkish-Syrian border will not be connected. Yet the challenges will persist as Turkey moves to a different phase of operations: state-building. This will create another set of issues to deal with that guarantee Turkish presence in Syria for the foreseeable future.
A special thanks to SyrianCivilWarMap.com for providing maps for this article.
Aaron Stein is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East
Rao Komar (@RaoKomar747) is an Austin based journalist and Middle East/Eurasia analyst.
Commentary
What A Syrian Neighborhood Can Teach Us About the Talks to End the Civil War
Scott Stewart supervises Stratfor’s analysis of terrorism and security issues. Before joining Stratfor, he was a special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years and was involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations.
Emergency services respond to a March 19 attack on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street, an area popular among tourists. Turkey faces a terrorist threat from three distinct groups, each with its own methods. (BURAK KARA/Getty Image
Three strands of terrorism currently have Turkey wrapped in a deadly embrace. One strand made its presence felt March 19, when a suicide bomber detonated his device among a group of tourists on Istiklal Street, one of Istanbul’s main pedestrian shopping areas, killing at least four people and wounding dozens, including 24 foreigners. The attack occurred near a local government office, in an area that includes restaurants, cafes and foreign consulates. Turkish authorities have since identified the bomber as a Turkish member of the Islamic State they had been seeking to arrest. Unfortunately, he was able to attack before he could be apprehended.
The second thread is the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a domestic militant group that seeks independence or autonomy in southeastern Turkey and that is a direct offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). On March 13, the TAK detonated a car bomb that killed 37 in a central Ankara neighborhood, its second large vehicle bomb attack in the Turkish capital this year.
The third strand is the Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C). Two female operatives from the group attacked a police bus with firearms and a hand grenade as it was approaching a police station in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa district on March 3. They succeeded in wounding two officers before being confronted and killed by police.
Though all three of these groups employ terrorism, each does so in a distinct manner. When these strands are unraveled and examined separately, important lessons can be gleaned about the capabilities of each group and the threat each poses.
Focusing on the How
Terrorist attacks do not just happen. They are the result of a process called the terrorist attack cycle. While every terrorist actor must follow the cycle to conduct an attack, the manner in which they do varies. By examining the terrorist tradecraft employed by a specific group and focusing on how attacks are conducted, it is possible to detect discernable patterns. These patterns can then be used to help identify the operative or group responsible for a particular attack. This is especially useful in a case where no organization claims responsibility for an attack or a group uses a false name in an effort to hide its hand.
Terrorists can and do improve their tradecraft, but this is normally an evolutionary process rather than a quantum leap, and there are normally indicators of a group’s evolving capabilities. This process of incremental advancement can be skipped when a terrorist actor receives outside assistance and training by someone with more advanced capabilities. This has historically been a state sponsor such as the Soviet KGB or East German Stasi, or a more experienced terrorist organization such as the Irish Republican Army, which taught bomb making in terrorist camps in Lebanon, Libya and Yemen. In recent years, such a leap occurred in Nigeria in mid-2011 when Boko Haram and Ansaru suddenly transitioned from using small improvised grenades to successfully employing vehicle bombs. This happened after Nigerian militants reportedly received training from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Shabaab.
The Islamic State in Turkey
Islamic State attacks inside Turkey have been for the most part unsophisticated and aimed at soft targets. In January 2015, the pregnant Chechen widow of an Islamic State fighter detonated a hand grenade at a guard post outside a tourist police station in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, killing herself and one police officer. It is unclear whether the group was responsible for the attack or if the woman planned and executed it herself. But in mid-2015, the Islamic State began a carefully orchestrated campaign of attacking Kurdish interests in Turkey in an effort to increase Kurdish/Turkish tensions. In June 2015, a pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) rally was targeted by two bombs left in the crowd in Diyarbakir, leaving four HDP members dead and over 100 injured. In July 2015, a suicide bomber attacked a rally at a Kurdish cultural center in Suruc, killing 33 and wounding over 100. Then in October 2015, a double suicide bombing at an HDP rally killed 103 and wounded more than 400 in the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Turkish history.
In 2016, the Islamic State shifted its focus to tourist targets. On Jan. 12, a suicide bomber attacked a group of foreign tourists near the Blue Mosque in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, killing 13 — mostly German tourists — and wounding nine. The March 19 suicide bombing on Istiklal Street mirrored this attack.
While the Islamic State has demonstrated that it can reach targets in Istanbul and Ankara, to date, none of the Islamic State attacks in Turkey have demonstrated a high degree of terrorist tradecraft. As we have previously noted, the Islamic State has struggled to project its terrorist power beyond its core areas of operation, and has not exhibited the same type of advanced transnational terrorist tradecraft capabilities that al Qaeda possesses. Because of this, even foreign attacks directly tied to the Islamic State’s core, such as the November 2015 Paris attacks, have been simple attacks directed against soft targets rather than more sophisticated attacks.
To date, relatively simple attacks have met the group’s needs in Turkey, but given the low body count in the March 19 bombing, it might not be surprising to see the group shift to armed assaults in Turkey in an effort to generate higher death tolls. The group will likely have to develop more sophisticated surveillance and other capabilities before it will be able to successfully attack better-protected targets in hostile environments such as Ankara and Istanbul. Because of this, and the current campaign of targeting foreigners, we can anticipate additional Islamic State attacks against locations where foreigners congregate, such as tourist sites, restaurants, hotels, etc. These may include armed assaults in addition to suicide bombings.
The TAK
There is some uncertainty regarding the relationship between the PKK and the TAK. Some observers claim that the TAK is a radical splinter that broke away from the PKK. Others maintain that the TAK is actually a PKK urban warfare unit using another name to deflect blame from the political group, or an autonomous unit that subscribes to the PKK’s general philosophy but does not operate under its direct guidance. Stratfor ascribes to the latter position because of the close correlation between TAK attacks and the PKK’s cease-fire — they ceased attacks before the cease-fire was proclaimed in March 2013, and resumed them shortly after the cease-fire was ended in November 2015. If the TAK was really a more radical splinter of the PKK, it could have been expected to conduct attacks after the PKK proclaimed its unilateral cease-fire. For its part, TAK claims it is separate from the PKK, but Stratfor believes it is more important to judge the group by what it does than what it says for public consumption.
The TAK began their activity with a series of low-level attacks against tourist sites along the Aegean Sea in 2005-2006. Unlike the recent Islamic State attacks in Istanbul, these strikes were meant more to scare tourists away and damage the Turkish economy rather than produce a large body count. In 2008, the TAK shifted its operations to target Istanbul, with deadly effect. The group’s first attack in Istanbul in October 2008 killed 17 and injured more than 150. In October 2010, it initiated a series of suicide bombings in Ankara, targeting police and security forces. As noted, TAK operations correlate closely with PKK sentiments. When the PKK negotiated with the government, proclaiming a cease-fire in 2013, the TAK attacks ended.
But while the TAK temporarily ended hostilities, it appears that the group’s operational activity did not cease. The group announced its reactivation in a spectacular fashion in December 2015 with a mortar attack on Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen International Airport. The attack, launched at 2 a.m. local time, killed one airport worker and damaged several aircraft parked on the tarmac. The timing of the attack indicated that it was likely meant to be more symbolic than deadly. A much deadlier attack would come in February when the TAK targeted a military transport bus near a military housing complex in Ankara with a suicide car bomb that killed 29 and wounded dozens more.
Then, on March 13, the organization conducted another suicide car bomb attack against a bus, this one near a transportation hub in the heart of Ankara. That particular action killed 37 and wounded more than 120. In a statement claiming credit, the TAK said that the attack had been intended to target security forces rather than civilians but noted that further civilian casualties are inevitable.
The TAK and PKK have long focused their attacks on security forces, so the statement’s claim that civilians were killed by mistake could be true. However, the Turkish military’s recent operations against the PKK in southeastern Turkey have been heavy-handed, and a number of civilians have died as a result. Because of this, it is possible that the TAK was retaliating for the Kurdish civilian deaths and glossing over that fact for the international audience. These Kurdish terrorist groups have no real motive to attack foreigners, and indeed, they are attempting to appeal for outside support to pressure Turkey to stop its campaign against them. So, directly attacking foreigners makes little sense. Still, with the TAK using powerful suicide car bombs in its current campaign, there is a possibility of foreign citizens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The TAK does not appear to be experiencing a shortage of explosives or willing suicide operatives. In addition, the group seems to have a robust planning and logistics capability. Therefore, we can expect more attacks directed against security forces in Ankara and elsewhere. However, to date the TAK has not exhibited the ability to directly attack hardened targets, such as ministry buildings or government officials with protective details.
Foreigners visiting government buildings and security force installations are at risk, as are foreigners living near government installations or along routes used by security force transport buses. Given that the group has at least one mortar, it is likely that they will conduct other indirect fire attacks at government facilities in addition to continued suicide bomb attacks.
The DHKP-C
The Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front can trace its lineage back to the old Revolutionary Left or Dev Sol militant group that has been fighting the Turkish government since the 1970s. Yet despite this long and violent heritage, the DHKP-C is more ambitious than it is capable. Since 2000, the group has carried out only about a dozen effective armed assaults, suicide bombings and assassinations. Many of the group’s attempted attacks have been thwarted or botched, including a May 2003 attack in which a DHKP-C member accidentally discharged her suicide device inside a restroom. The group was also behind the failed February 2013 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.
What the group lacks in capability it makes up for in persistence. Two members of the group stormed an Istanbul courthouse and took a prosecutor hostage before being gunned down — the prosecutor was also killed during the exchange of fire. In August 2015, the DHKP-C employed a car bomb and armed assault against a police station in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli district in an attack that killed one police officer. The same day, two of the group’s members also attempted an amateurish armed assault against the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul.
The March 3 attack against a police bus in Istanbul was perhaps inspired by or modeled after the February TAK bus attack in Ankara, but its execution displayed the hallmarks of a typical DHKP-C attack. Security camera footage of the attack showed that the female operatives were ill at ease with their firearms and displayed poor marksmanship fundamentals. Also, the hand grenade they threw at the bus did not detonate. With this amateurish execution, it is not surprising that despite choosing a soft target, only two police officers were wounded and none killed.
The DHKP-C is mostly focused on attacking the Turkish government and U.S. diplomatic facilities. Because of this, tourists and business travelers are not likely to be directly targeted but could be unintended casualties or be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These three groups differ in capability, motivation, intent and tradecraft, but they are all deadly, and can all be expected to continue to go after soft targets in Turkey for the foreseeable future. Of these, the TAK is the most capable at the present time, but the Islamic State is the most likely to directly target foreigners.
At the Republican retreat for members of Congress in Philadelphia, President Trump’s tweets, speeches and executive orders derailed the GOP’s plan to agree upon a replacement for Obamacare and set other policy initiatives. (Video: Jayne Orenstein/Photo: Getty Images/The Washington Post)
Obamacare and set other policy initiatives. (Video: Jayne Orenstein/Photo: Getty Images/The Washington Post)
By Karen DeYoung and Philip Rucker January 26 at 8:25 PM
President Trump began this week to reshape the U.S. role in the world, laying the groundwork, in a series of planned and signed executive actions and statements, for the “America first” foreign policy on which he campaigned.
Already, Trump has mandated construction of a border wall with Mexico and a clampdown on local immigration enforcement. Other directives drafted but not yet signed would halt all refugee admissions and entry into the United States of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries deemed terrorist hotbeds; declare a moratorium on new multilateral treaties; and mandate audits of U.S. funding for international organizations, including the United Nations, with a view toward cutting U.S. voluntary contributions by 40 percent.
Additional pending orders, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post, call for a review of cyber capabilities and vulnerabilities, in advance of what is expected to be greater use of offensive powers; and direct the Pentagon to quickly develop plans to reduce spending on items not deemed “highest priority,” while ramping up programs to expand the armed forces and modernize the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
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[Read the draft of the executive order to rebuild the armed forces]
Another draft order under consideration would direct the State Department to review its designations of foreign terrorist organizations, allowing it to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the list, according to an administration official who was not authorized to discuss it. The group’s status as a legitimate political movement vs. a terrorist group is controversial in the Middle East. Such a listing would please some, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but could anger others, such as Turkey and Qatar.
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The new president is expected to make his mark on an aggressive legislative agenda.
Trump could sign some of these orders as early as Friday during a scheduled visit to the Pentagon. The White House declined to comment on the directives.
If implemented, these initiatives and other steps Trump has previewed will usher in a new era of American foreign policy, after decades of bipartisan agreement that the United States has a responsibility to spread democracy and stand up for the oppressed, and that it would prosper when a united, free world prospered.
In the policies Trump has outlined, there are no apparent trade-offs to be made that balance short-term American advantage with global goals benefiting the United States over the longer term. Instead, as a policy posted on the White House website on Inauguration Day put it, “The world will be more peaceful and more prosperous with a stronger and more respected America.”
“Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families,” Trump said in his inauguration speech. “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
[Read the draft of the executive order on treaties ]
Trump sees himself as the protector of an American fortress and disrupter of a world that is growing more calamitous and dangerous by the day. “The world is a total mess,” he said Wednesday in an interview with ABC News.
At times, it is difficult to determine whether he is laying down the law or establishing a negotiating position. Having pushed Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto into a corner on funding the border wall, the administration indicated Thursday that it considered Mexico’s cancellation of a presidential visit to Washington a mere postponement.
5 challenges Trump may face building a border wall View Graphic
Kori Schake, a former national security official in the George W. Bush administration who opposed Trump’s candidacy, said the executive orders are already causing political damage with U.S. allies. “It’s consistent with the way in which President Trump creates chaos and moves blithely on,” she said.
Many of Trump’s ideas are not new, although they draw from a wide political spectrum. Trump’s reimagining of a new 21st-century architecture for world order, including a sharp reduction in U.S. participation in international institutions, has been a rallying cry for conservatives for years.
[Read the draft of the executive order on U.S. funding]
His words and actions reflect “a view that the status quo that has essentially grown up over the last 70 years costs the U.S. more than it benefits it,” said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior official in the George H.W. Bush administration. That view, extending from trade policy to traditional alliances, Haass said, “is fundamentally flawed in its assumption that American involvement and leadership in the world has cost us more than it’s gained us, but that nonetheless appears to be their vision.”
The United Nations, with its welter of sometimes obscure sub-organizations, and the platform it often provides for criticism of the United States, has been a long-standing target.
Two of the treaties that Trump’s proposed executive order makes particular mention of as forcing adherence to “radical domestic agendas” — the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child — are traditional bull’s eyes. Like many other U.N.-generated treaties, they have never been ratified by the United States.
Trump proposes internal high-level committees to examine multilateral treaties, with a view toward leaving them, as well as a 40 percent cut in funding for international organizations whose agendas are “contrary to American interests.” It is unclear whether the intent is to cut funds for U.N. activities such as peacekeeping forces and humanitarian programs, as well as those, already targeted by Trump, that support Palestinians and other groups out of favor with the new administration.
John B. Bellinger III, who served as legal counsel to both the National Security Council and the State Department in the George W. Bush administration, said the treaty examination was based on a “false premise . . . that the United States has become party to numerous multilateral treaties that are not in the United States’ interest.”
There are “many hundreds of multilateral treaties that help Americans every day in concrete ways,” he said. Without them, “Americans could not have our letters delivered in foreign countries; could not fly over foreign countries or drive on foreign roads using our state driver’s licenses; could not have access to a foreign consular official if we are arrested abroad; could not have our children returned if abducted by a parent; and could not prevent foreign ships from polluting our waters.”
While mandates for building a border wall, boosting immigration law enforcement and barring refugees will take immediate effect, others buy time by establishing committees and reviews.
The draft Pentagon order begins by stating, “It shall be the policy of the United States to pursue Peace Through Strength.” It directs Defense Secretary James Mattis to produce a National Defense Strategy — something virtually every administration regularly does — by the beginning of 2018.
There is little apparent controversy in the draft executive order to strengthen cybersecurity, a six-page document that in tone and substance could have been written by the Obama administration. It calls for no bold initiatives but rather for review of areas Trump’s predecessor had already scrutinized.
[Read the draft of the executive order on cybersecurity]
One line in the proposed order appeared to signal that the new administration might want to reorganize agencies or boost legal authorities to better protect the country’s civilian government networks and critical infrastructure.
Even as Trump sets direction with executive orders, the White House is trying to exert direct control over policymaking at federal departments and agencies. Although offices in many departments sit empty as Cabinet nominees await confirmation, and sub-Cabinet positions are not yet filled, senior advisers have been deployed from the West Wing as liaisons to some departments, to ensure the work that is being done is in keeping with White House priorities.
Of the suggestion that at least some of Trump’s moves so far may be largely symbolic and eventual policies could become more traditional, Schake said, “Oh my God, that’s the hopeful interpretation — that he’s trying to take rapid symbolic gestures that will please his base and that the policy details can get worked out subsequently when he has a Cabinet in place.”
“The downside, of course, is it brings all of the diplomatic and economic downsides of having taken the policy action, even if it’s only a symbolic gesture,” she said.
Ellen Nakashima, Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed to this report.
5 challenges Trump may face building a border wall View Graphic