Long Way To Afrin: Turkey's Strategic Refugee Policy Aimed At Electoral Hegemony And Regional Political Ambitions

Syrian ‘guests’ in Turkey have been used not only as political tools for foreign ambitions, but also for reinforcing the conservative and Islamist ideology promoted by Erdogan’s AKP.

- Megan Barlow

On January 20, Turkey began its second military campaign in northern Syria. The target is Afrin, a Kurdish-majority canton and stronghold of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military alliance led by the People’s Protection Unit (YPG).

The Turkish intervention is backed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), comprised of several Syrian opposition groups such as the Islamic Ahrar Al-Sham and the Hamza Brigade. Turkey’s ‘Operation Olive Branch’ objective is aimed at neutralising the YPG, which Ankara considers a terrorist group and offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish militia involved in an ongoing conflict with the Turkish state since the eighties.

However, Washington has for long regarded the YPG as its best ally in the Middle East, thanks to the crucial role played by the Kurds in the US-led campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria.

This military intervention follows the ‘Operation Euphrates Shield’ launched in Northern Syria in 2016. The Turkey-led operation was supported by the FSA against ISIS and the YPG/SDF. The most striking difference between the two Turkeyled interventions lies in the fact that while the former was launched against the Islamic State, the latter is allegedly being conducted with the support of ISIS fighters, to destroy Syrian Kurdish militias.

The international players

This operation launched by Ankara against the US-backed YPG has exacerbated the tense and delicate relations between the several international players involved in the Syrian war, and not only between the two NATO allies.

The military intervention jeopardises Washington’s diplomatic relations in the region, as well as the fragile agreements between Iran, Turkey and Russia borne out of the recent Sochi conference hosted by Moscow and strongly boycotted by the Syrian opposition.