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Photographed by Theo Wyss-Flamm (12-4)
OK, first off, a disclaimer: The complex and convoluted geopolitical relations of the Middle East are way too complicated to explain in 910 words and what follows is only my best efforts to summarize decades of history into a synopsis short enough to read while also studying for that math test in advisory. Please take this as an invite to do some research and reading of your own.
With that said, let’s get started with a little background information. The Kurdish people are indigineous to a region in the Middle East encompassing parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Armenia. While exact numbers can be hard to find, there are an estimated 30 million Kurds living in this area, making them the fourth largest ethnic group in the region, and they are considered to be the world’s largest ethnic group without a country of its own. For more than a century, certain Kurdish sects have sought to establish their own nation, referred to as Kurdistan (distinct from Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, which are provinces of sovereign states). There’s a huge number of distinct organizations dedicated to advancing Kurdish interests, the two most relevant being the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The YPG is a fixture of Northern Syria, a heavily Kurdish region. They have been instrumental in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria, often being described as the most effective anti-ISIS force in the region. Since 2015, the YPG has been receiving the support of both the U.S. and its Western allies in fighting ISIS, which has come mainly in the form of weapon shipments to the Kurds and airstrikes against ISIS targets. At the request of the U.S., the YPG also founded the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a combined army made up of both Syrian Kurds and Syrian Arabs to combat ISIS in the region. The PKK, by contrast, is considered by the U.S. and NATO (as well as Turkey) to be a terrorist organization. They are a political and militant group established primarily in Turkey, with much of their support base localized near the Turkey-Syria border. For the past 35 years, with the exception of two relatively brief ceasefires, they have been in engaged in armed conflict with the government of Turkey for one of two objectives (depending on who you believe): the first is the creation of an independent Kurdistan, and the second is simply greater autonomy inside of Turkey. Turkey is firm in its belief that the PKK want to establish their own country, and are unsurprisingly very much against that. They also consider the YPG to be nothing more than another wing of the PKK, and therefore deem them as terrorists as well.
Here’s where the problem arises. As the SDF is responsible for expunging ISIS from Northern Syria, and is largely made up of and led by Kurdish forces, there has been an ever greater “build up” of Kurds on the Turkey-Syria border. They’ve come out of this long and bloody war with ISIS well armed, with much more authority in Syria, and with the backing of Western powers (or, at least, so we thought). This troubled both Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who considered this gathering on the other side of their 500 mile long border wall to be full of terrorists. Launching an offensive directly into Syria seemed to be an effective (if not entirely inhumane and despicable) method of forcing the YPG and the SDF, as well as the countless Kurdish civilians, to move more southward into Syria. There was a really, really, really big issue with that plan of action, however. The U.S. had a very small group of soldiers, less than fifty, stationed at points on the Turkey-Syria border. In the event of a Turkish invasion into Syria, it was inevitable that the U.S. would suffer casualties, which would quickly lead to international condemnation, sanctions, a loss of U.S. support in the future and losing any chance at joining the European Union in the future. So, yeah, a pretty bad hand for them. Until, that is, President Trump decided to withdraw those troops stationed along the border.
Now, everyone and their mother and their 3rd aunt twice removed has some sort of conjecture about why the President made the call to withdraw our soldiers from the region. Nobody, however, can say with complete certainty why he did, and I would like to avoid speculation. However, I can say with complete certainty that the results of this order have been, quite simply, disastrous. For the past month, reports of war crimes have been flooding out of Turkey, with videos surfacing of Turkey-backed militias executing Kurdish soldiers and civilians alike. As the Kurds are pushed further and further into Syria, they have had to abandon many of the camps in which they held ISIS prisoners; more than 100 ISIS members have escaped as of November 5th. The Kurds have also been forced into forming an alliance with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who has vowed to return Northeast Syria to state control (as opposed to the fairly autonomous freedoms the mostly Kurdish region had enjoyed previously). This further strengthens both Assad, best known for using chlorine gas against his own people, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a close Syrian ally. I suppose we know what (and who) Assad, Putin and ISIS will be grateful for this Thanksgiving.
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