Turkey is los­ing in Afrin, this is a cer­tain­ty. It is los­ing both at the mil­i­tary and the polit­i­cal lev­els against the Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces (SDF) which is made up of a major­i­ty of Kurds with Arab and Chris­t­ian ele­ments. One might doubt this assess­ment, faced as they are by an army supe­ri­or in num­bers and in equip­ment, with a con­sid­er­able advan­tage in the air and in tech­nol­o­gy.   Launched from a coun­try where there is no more oppo­si­tion, where every con­tra­dic­to­ry voice is purged, even from the army. The great dan­ger in this sit­u­a­tion is Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan’s head­long rush for­ward that risks push­ing him to extreme measures.

By Raphaël Lebru­jah, Feb­ru­ary 12 2018
“Pourquoi la Turquie est en train de per­dre à Afrin” on Rojinfo

A recap on events

Urgency forces us to sac­ri­fice the depth in our analy­ses of the bal­ance of pow­er between the oppos­ing forces. The pro­pa­gan­da machine is at work. Infor­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion are the essen­tial stakes to win the war in peo­ple’s minds. The Turk­ish state is mas­ter­ful at pass­ing off its defeats as vic­to­ries. If you lis­ten to Erdo­gan, the Turk­ish army is at the doors of Afrin. Morale is an essen­tial ele­ment in com­bat and in the upcom­ing mobi­liza­tions. Pub­lic mes­sages must be sim­ple in order to be under­sood. But in a glob­al analy­sis, there is need to take some dis­tance and look at issues in a more com­plex manner.

What are the conditions under which Erdogan has launched his offensive on Afrin?

First of all, this inter­ven­tion is poor­ly per­ceived by many actors on the inter­na­tion­al lev­el. Not that the great pow­ers feel com­pas­sion for the Kurds but, for the major­i­ty of them,  the offen­sive does not serve their interests.

There is a clear lack of con­dem­na­tion but offi­cial sup­port for the inter­ven­tion is also lack­ing. Which gives rise to calls for “restraint”. Thus, there is no clear sup­port but rather a com­plic­it silence.

The Unit­ed States let the mat­ter pro­ceed but they are embar­rassed by an attack against mil­i­tary forces they hope will be their best allies in Syr­ia against Iran, after the down­fall of ISIS.

Ger­many has sus­pend­ed arms deliv­er­ies to Turkey, embar­rassed by the use of its lat­est gen­er­a­tion tanks in the operation.

In France, the for­eign affairs min­is­ter, Mr. Le Dri­an, called for a meet­ing of the UN’s Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil fol­low­ing the Turk­ish inva­sion of Afrin, before low­er­ing his voice fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the Turk­ish ambas­sador to France. The min­is­ter of the armies, Flo­rence Par­ly, clear­ly called on Turkey to cease the fight­ing explain­ing this was harm­ing the fight against ISIS, short­ly before Pres­i­dent Macron cham­pi­oned Turkey in an inter­view in Le Figaro, call­ing France’s allies, the FDS, armed by France, “poten­tial ter­ror­ists”. With­in the pres­i­den­tial major­i­ty, deputy Paul Molac called the gov­ern­ment him­self on this ques­tion, lead­ing to the per­cep­tion that Emmanuel Macron’s posi­tion does not have the sup­port of large seg­ments of his majority.

This match­es up with pub­lic opin­ions that are large­ly favor­able to the Kurds and where the Islamist Erdo­gan is strong­ly detest­ed, as demon­strat­ed by the stances in sev­er­al media. Among the great West­ern pow­ers, only Great Britain has shown itself open­ly favor­able to the Turk­ish invasion.

The often con­tra­dic­to­ry reac­tions of West­ern states can be explained by a few key elements.

The fear that Erdo­gan send mass­es of refugees into Europe is one of them. The Euro­pean states also fear infil­tra­tion by Jihadists com­mit­ting dead­ly attacks and ruin­ing the tourist indus­try, as was the case on Novem­ber 13.

The eco­nom­ic stakes play an impor­tant role, notably with the con­struc­tion of the “Turk­ish Stream” pipeline, the con­struc­tion of which would start in Rus­sia, then pass­ing through Turkey, thus bypass­ing polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries. Of course, Turkey is a mem­ber of NATO and the West­ern States fear its clos­er ties with Rus­sia. This pres­sure pol­i­cy was used with the Sovi­ets before, by Mustapha Kemal in his day.

And yet, the SDF insure the safe­ty of both the West­ern peo­ple and states by fight­ing ISIS and Jihadists effi­cient­ly. What’s more, this is also a means through which West­ern pow­ers can return to a ter­ri­to­ry from which they were almost absent for decades: Syr­ia.   It is a ter­ri­to­ry rich in agri­cul­tur­al and oil resources, occu­py­ing a choice geostrate­gi­cal posi­tion at the very heart of the Mid­dle-East. Con­trary to Turkey, it is a reli­able part­ner. For the Turk­ish State armed the Jihadists of Al-Qae­da and of ISIS. These last expelled a good part of the pro-West­ern rebels from the Syr­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front, in the north of the coun­try, forc­ing the big West­ern pow­ers to rely on the SDF in their fight against the Jihadists. One might as well say that sev­er­al West­ern States no longer trust Turkey who does not keep its com­mit­ments and does not hes­i­tate to betray its allies. This explains the hes­i­ta­tions, in par­tic­u­lar those of France who will not be able to strad­dle the fence indefinitely.

Rus­sia is play­ing its game with finesse. It is at the ori­gin of the green light giv­en to the inva­sion in the frame­work of a par­ti­tion of Syr­ia between the Turkey-Jihadist group and the Iran-Rus­sia- Syr­i­an regime axis, for Rus­sia is the one who con­trols the air space. For Rus­sia, this is a way of putting pres­sure on the Kurds it would like to see fall into its lap as a way to spite the Unit­ed States. At the same time, this allows it to ask for greater shares of ter­ri­to­ry from Turkey in Syr­ia, in exchange for its laiss­er-faire in Afrin.   It also dis­tances Turkey from NATO more and more. Rus­sia will be in a posi­tion to nego­ti­ate with two adver­saries-part­ners weak­ened by com­bat. On the diplo­mat­ic front, this appears like a win­ning draw for the Russ­ian. At least, almost, as we shall see later.

Among the region­al pow­ers, sev­er­al made nois­es against the inter­ven­tion, Egypt first, then Irak, but the most impor­tant posi­tion against the inter­ven­tion was that of Iran. Indeed, see­ing its main mil­i­tary com­peti­tor in the Mid­dle East carv­ing out shares from his Syr­i­an vas­sal does not agree with the Iran­ian agen­da. Iran is against the inter­ven­tion despite its open­ly hos­tile pol­i­cy toward Roja­va and the SDF. Vis­i­bly, Iran fears Turkey much more than it fears the SDF. Iran is said to have let Turk­ish army con­voys be bom­bard­ed as they took posi­tion in the Idlib region. The Syr­i­an regime has also con­demned the inter­ven­tion even if, just like Iran, it has not insti­gat­ed a large scale mil­i­tary reac­tion against the Turk­ish invasion.

The domes­tic sit­u­a­tion is far from sta­bi­lized for Erdo­gan. From an eco­nom­ic view­point, the Turk­ish lira is in a free fall and infla­tion has explod­ed. From a polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, hav­ing stripped bare the HDP, the third oppo­si­tion force (pro-Kur­dish) of its elect­ed mem­bers and mil­i­tants, the great major­i­ty of which are now locked into its gaols, it has begun the dan­ger­ous task of dis­man­tling the CHP, the sec­ond oppo­si­tion force, of Kemal­ist per­sua­sion and much bet­ter implant­ed in the coun­try than the HDP (to the repres­sion of which the CHP par­tic­i­pat­ed). In this con­text, a war is the per­fect way to trig­ger a fresh wave of purges against “ene­mies of the inte­ri­or”, and close ranks.

The date for the launch­ing of the inva­sion was care­ful­ly cho­sen with this per­spec­tive in mind: Jan­u­ary 20 is deep in win­ter­time. Snow and glac­i­ers on the moun­tains keep the PKK gueril­la from car­ry­ing large offen­sive manoeu­vers against the Turk­ish army (the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty plays a major role in the train­ing of the SDF).

The Turk­ish army itself is in great dif­fi­cul­ty and not much inclined to invad­ing Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ry. Since the purges, its hier­ar­chy has been stripped of many com­pe­tent offi­cers, notably in the Air force from which most of the trained pilots were removed. More­over, pri­or to the purges, the for­mer Chief of Staff of the Turk­ish army, Gen­er­al Necdet Özel had declared dur­ing the sum­mer of 2015, con­cern­ing a pos­si­ble Turk­ish inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia: “Enter­ing, that’s easy, but how do we come back out again?” This shows that the deci­sion to invade Afrin may not be all that unan­i­mous in the army.

The malaise is that much greater giv­en that the “Euphrates Shield” oper­a­tion in the sum­mer of 2016 was marred by inci­dents. The oper­a­tion aimed at pre­vent­ing the junc­tion of the Kur­dish can­tons of Afrin and Kobane in the frame­work of a Putin-Erdo­gan agree­ment, in which the lat­ter would cede Alep­po in exchange for the entry of the Turk­ish army in Syr­ia. At first, ISIS ced­ed ground with­out major inci­dents until the town of Al Bab was reached and trans­formed into a ceme­tery of armored cars, Turk­ish sol­diers and Jihadist com­bat­ants fol­low­ing a deci­sion by ISIS to keep the town, prob­a­bly in order to nego­ti­ate bet­ter agree­ments with Turkey. Dur­ing this oper­a­tion, the Jihadist mer­ce­nar­ies (trans­la­tion: the Free Syr­i­an Army) at the ser­vice of Turkey demon­strat­ed very poor effi­cien­cy against ISIS, despite its being already great­ly enfee­bled. Turk­ish offi­cers resigned or put them­selves on pro­longed sick leave. Morale was poor and the loss­es, heavy. This was a direct result of the dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion caused to the Turk­ish army by the purges, and of the incom­pe­ten­cy of its auxiliaries.

Poor­ly moti­vat­ed offi­cers, a demor­al­ized army, a vast quan­ti­ty of mate­r­i­al destroyed, unre­li­able Jihadist aux­il­iaries, frag­ile inter­na­tion­al agree­ments and an iso­lat­ed Turkey, a coun­try on the brink of a finan­cial precipice and to top it off: weak­ened intel­li­gence services.

Indeed, last sum­mer, the PKK cap­tured the direc­tor of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al human resources of the MIT (Turk­ish secret ser­vices) and the man in charge of the fight against the sep­a­ratists, mean­ing against the PKK and Kurds in gen­er­al. The two “guests” began to talk in front of the cam­era on the ties between Turkey and ISIS. But they also start­ed to talk about the MIT’s inner orga­ni­za­tion, which then had to urgent­ly reor­ga­nize all its cells.

Which is the same as say­ing that the intel­li­gence pre­ced­ing the inter­ven­tion in Afrin must have been of poor qual­i­ty and as the Chi­nese war the­o­reti­cian Sun Tzu said: “An army with­out spies is like a body with­out eyes and with­out ears.” 

Also of poor qual­i­ty were the rock­ets launched by the MIT against the Turk­ish town of Kilis in order to jus­ti­fy the inter­ven­tion against the region of Afrin. Said rock­ets did not have a range suf­fi­cient to reach the tar­get­ed town from the SDF’s posi­tions. The direc­tor of the MIT had men­tioned such prac­tices in 2014, speak­ing of send­ing men to throw rock­ets at Turk­ish towns in order to jus­ti­fy an inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia. Because of its large­ly nation­al­is­tic pop­u­la­tion, Turk­ish soci­ety has reunit­ed in the face of a Kur­dish domes­tic and exte­ri­or ene­my, but how long will this last? How many coffins will it accept?

Now on the Afrin side, the inte­ri­or sit­u­a­tion is much more envi­able. Afrin and Roja­va are both large­ly paci­fied areas. Insti­tu­tions set up since July 2012 are prov­ing rel­a­tive­ly effi­cient in an extreme­ly chaot­ic environment.

Elec­tions were orga­nized, end of 2017. Approx­i­mate­ly 70% of the elec­torate par­tic­i­pat­ed. It gave a very strong major­i­ty to the PYD (Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union Par­ty, a Syr­i­an broth­er par­ty to the PKK) and to its part­ners despite the civ­il war, the short­ages and the inter­na­tion­al pressure.

Since 2012, the YPG (Peo­ple’s Defence mili­tias, main force in the SDF) and now the whole coali­tion with­in the SDF have been con­sid­er­ably rein­forced in weapons, com­bat­ants and know-how. The SDF con­trol a ter­ri­to­ry ringfenced by the Unit­ed States against the regime and against Turkey, with the excep­tion of Afrin and of the Kur­dish quar­ter of Sheikh Maq­sud in Aleppo.

The fight against ISIS has par­tial­ly pulled Roja­va out of the inter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion in which it found itself pri­or to the bat­tle and the recap­ture of Kobané. More­over, the ter­rain of wood­ed moun­tains in Afrin is per­fect­ly   adapt­ed to defen­sive manoeu­vers against mech­a­nized attack­ing forces.

Advanc­ing on Afrin implies pass­ing through val­leys cross­ing the moun­tains. Mech­a­nized forces can only progress with dif­fi­cul­ty in the heights, ren­der­ing all pro­gres­sion very per­ilous. It is very easy for the light infantry units to move through the moun­tains in order to harass the ene­my’s flanks engulfed in the val­ley. Tak­ing the moun­tains appears very com­pli­cat­ed for the Turk­ish army who would need adapt­ed infantry forces, good knowl­edge of the ter­rain and good prepa­ra­tion. Three ele­ments the Turk­ish forces will have trou­ble com­bin­ing. Not sim­pli­fy­ing mat­ters, over the past six years, the SDF have for­ti­fied the zone, cre­at­ing a defen­sive net­work of trench­es, tun­nels and bunkers in the most strate­gic spots. Thus, the SDF have the advan­tage in launch­ing assaults against the low­lands from their for­ti­fied posi­tions and cap­tur­ing their ene­my in a pin­cer move­ment.   Videos show­ing the destruc­tion of tanks give tes­ti­mo­ny to this, often show­ing the guid­ed mis­siles launched by the SDF touch­ing the flanks or the rear of the tank.

The PYD has man­aged to put in place a sys­tem of mass mobi­liza­tion, as ver­i­fied in the enor­mous demon­stra­tions across Roja­va and in Afrin in par­tic­u­lar, despite the threat of bomb­ings. Roja­va can mobi­lize vast sec­tions of its pop­u­la­tion for bat­tle. We must nev­er for­get that this is a peo­ple in rev­o­lu­tion. In the heat of the rev­o­lu­tion the (French) Jacobins had man­aged to turn around a des­per­ate sita­tion thanks to a mas­sive pop­u­lar mobi­liza­tion. The same holds true in many his­tor­i­cal exam­ples such as that of the Bolcheviks dur­ing the Russ­ian civ­il war. Anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor: the Syr­i­an regime, prob­a­bly in accord with Iran and Rus­sia, allows com­bat­ants and weapons to pass through its ter­ri­to­ry, mak­ing of Afrin an sup­plied area that is not under siege. Videos show­ing com­bat­ants leav­ing from Kobané all the way to Afrin tes­ti­fy to the fact the road is open and bare­ly masked. More­over, the sup­ply routes cross­ing through the regime’s ter­ri­to­ry on the way to Afrin do not appear to be bom­bard­ed, the Rus­sians hav­ing prob­a­bly for­bid­den fly-overs by Turk­ish planes in this zone, mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion still more del­i­cate for Turkey, poten­tial­ly fac­ing all the forces of Rojava.

As a final ele­ment, and per­haps the most imor­tant, the deter­mi­na­tion can be under­stood giv­en the stakes this con­fronta­tion rep­re­sents for both forces. For the Kurds in Afrin, resist­ing the inva­sion is a ques­tion of sur­vival. If the Turk­ish army and the Jihadist mer­ce­nar­ies reach Afrin, the Kurds  will lose every­thing. They will lose their lives, their fam­i­lies, their belong­ings. Where­as the Jihadist mer­ce­nar­ies are paid a few hun­dred dol­lars per month and have noth­ing but mea­ger per­spec­tives of loot­ing, the Turk­ish sol­diers are gal­va­nized by speech­es of a nation­al­is­tic and con­quer­ing Islam.   But what can they real­ly gain in this offen­sive apart from blood and tears? The Kurds have much deep­er moti­va­tions in defend­ing their land. In the same vein, the soci­ety of Roja­va apply­ing the par­a­digm of demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism, in los­ing their land they would also lose their life sys­tem and their belief in a democ­ra­cy to which they are deeply attached. The thought of falling under a colo­nial tute­lage again is unac­cept­able to them. On this basis, the Kur­dish com­bat­ants are large­ly accus­tomed to the idea of dying as mar­tyrs for their people.

So of course, what can deter­mi­na­tion achieve against an unfurl­ing wave of tanks, mer­ce­nar­ies and planes? The Viet­namese gen­er­al Giap had already answered this ques­tion when, in his day, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the defeat of the Unit­ed States and of France. The author of these lignes had announced a breach toward vic­to­ry in Kobané, in Octo­ber 2014, dur­ing the dark­er hours of the bat­tle and the quo­ta­tion evoked at the time has not aged at all. It stands as a reminder of Gen­er­al Giap’s words:

« Man’s spir­it is stronger than his own machines…It will be a war between a tiger and an ele­phant. If ever the tiger stops, the ele­phant will pierce him with his pow­er­ful tusks. Except the tiger will not stop. It will hide in the jun­gle dur­ing the day only to come out at night. It will pounce on the ele­phant and rip his back into great shreds then it will dis­ap­pear again in the dark jun­gle. And slow­ly the ele­phant will die of exhaus­tion and haemorhage. This is how the war will be in Indochina.” 

Evolutions in the course of operations

Now that we know our start­ing point, we can add that numer­ous twists have occurred in the course of the oper­a­tion. The most vis­i­ble is the image giv­en off by this inva­sion. Indeed, the Turk­ish Pres­i­dent does not have a good press in inter­na­tion­al pub­lic opin­ions, the Islmaists on which he relies even less so, where­as the SDF have a pos­i­tive image since they van­quished ISIS in Raqqa and in Kobané. The Turk­ish state and the Jihadists con­tribute to the deep­en­ing of this gap. The Turk­ish bomb­ings have already caused many dead and wound­ed (in less than 3 weeks of inter­ven­tions, more than 150 dead and 330 wound­ed when these lines were writ­ten). Images of chil­dren’s bod­ies, torn and man­gled by the bombs rein­force the antipa­thy against the Erdo­gan regime. The Turk­ish army has tar­get­ed sev­er­al Arab refugee camps, bomb­ing them while offi­cial­ly inter­ven­ing in order to “hand the region back to his legit­i­mate own­ers”, which is to say the Arabs. Still in this same vein, dec­la­ra­tions aim­ing at eth­nic cleans­ing against the Kurds don’t improve the image of an inop­por­tune and unjus­ti­fi­able inva­sion in the eyes of inter­na­tion­al law, nei­ther Afrin nor Roja­va hav­ing ever threat­ened or attacked Turkey.

Added to this are the hor­rors broad­cast by the Jihadists and the Turk­ish army them­selves. Tor­ture of aged vil­lagers, beat­ings on war pris­on­ers, use of chem­i­cal weapons (con­firmed by the SOHR, the Syr­i­an Obser­va­to­ry on Human Rights), threats of exter­mi­na­tion against the Kurds of Afrin. Every­thing is on dis­play, even veer­ing to the ridicu­lous as when sev­er­al Jihadists are filmed steal­ing chick­ens and pigeons from Kur­dish peas­ants, to the cry of “Allah Akbar” (God is great). On social net­works, some took hold of the affair, using the flag of the SLA but replac­ing the red stars by chickens.

On a more dra­mat­ic note, the inter­ven­tion took a par­tic­u­lar­ly ter­ri­fy­ing turn after Jihadists them­selves showed the video of their actions on the body of of Barîn Kobané. This woman, a Kur­dish com­bat­ant vic­tim of fem­i­ni­cide, died fight­ing against the Turk­ish State and its mer­ce­nar­ies. When her body fell between their hands, they undressed it, dis­em­bow­eled it and cut off the breasts. Dur­ing the video, a Jihadist plays at touch­ing the bits of flesh left where her breasts were. These actions are a crime against all women and a threat clear­ly adressed to them. This video shocked well beyond the Kur­dish com­mu­ni­ty as can be seen by the tri­bune in Le Figaro denounc­ing it, as well as the numer­ous press arti­cles. But per­haps most reveal­ing of the malaise was the reac­tion of Turk­ish par­ti­sans them­selves. Romain Cail­let, famil­iar with the Jihadist sphere for hav­ing once belonged to it, recent­ly impro­vised him­self as a spokesman for Turkey. He inter­vened in sev­er­al tweets, claim­ing a kamikaze group had done this to the body and deny­ing the vio­lence of the Jihadists (he prefers to call them ‘Sun­nis’). Yet, the SLA had already declared it was inves­ti­gat­ing the event, acknowl­edg­ing its verac­i­ty. What is most sin­is­ter about this may be how it brings to light what the Islamists have been doing since the begin­ning of the war in Syr­ia. It reveals a pro­fond­ly bru­tal and reac­tionary men­tal­i­ty. These images, shared by the Jihadists them­selves, demon­strat­ed their feel­ing of total impunity.

The cam­paign has also giv­en rise to a major inci­dent with Rus­sia, one of its fight­er-bombers being brought down by Syr­i­an Islamists sup­port­ed by Turkey. The pilot is dead. Rus­si­a’s first mea­sure of retor­sion was to close off the air space to Turk­ish planes. Tak­ing advan­tage of this respite, the SDF fight­ers counter-attacked and took back posi­tions held by the Turk­ish army. In this con­text, they cap­tured an ACV-15 armored vehi­cle. In par­al­lel, the Syr­i­an regime attempt­ed an assult on SDF posi­tions. The Unit­ed States, whose sup­port for the SDF had been put in doubt by the lat­est events, stepped up to the plate and are said to have killed 100 of the regime’s fight­ers. A few hours lat­er, Turk­ish bomb­ings start­ed again with a vengeance against the SDF posi­tions, after Rus­sia re-opened the air space. But this reveals the Amer­i­can strat­e­gy since the begin­ning of the civ­il war in Syr­ia. The Unit­ed States want to push the SDF and the Bachar el Assad regime into a direct con­fronta­tion. This inter­ven­tion occurred when the Turk­ish planes had stopped their bomb­ing. It is far from the first incur­sion of the regime into the Kur­dish zone and reac­tions are usu­al­ly more mod­er­ate, which indi­cates an inten­tion to pass on a mes­sage. The Unit­ed States, in bomb­ing with the con­se­quences that fol­lowed, which is to say the renew­al of Turk­ish bomb­ings, are telling the SDF: we will pro­tect you against the Turks if you fight Iran’s indebt­ed one, Bachar El Assad. If you refuse, we will send the Turks after you.

Oper­a­tions on the ground have trou­ble advanc­ing. More seri­ous yet, posi­tions acquired in the day are tak­en back by the SDF dur­ing the night. At best, the Turk­ish army has pen­e­trat­ed 5 km into the front lines. Fol­low­ing the re-open­ing of the air space, two Turk­ish heli­copters were downed and Turkey is acknowl­edg­ing more loss­es. Ten­sions are appear­ing between the Jihadist aux­il­iaries and the Turk­ish army send­ing them mas­sive­ly on to their deaths. As announced, the val­leys of Afrin have become dead­ly traps for the Turk­ish army and its aux­il­iaries. Murat Karay­i­lan, com­man­der of the PKK, declared Afrin’s defend­ing forces should let Turkey enter in order to crush it. Many tanks have been pul­ver­ized, notably a Leop­ard tank 2, famed for its resis­tance, which was blown apart by the anti­tank mis­sile of the Kur­dish wom­en’s mili­tia, the YPJ.

All this to say the oper­a­tion risks being long and mur­der­ous. As more time goes by, this inter­ven­tion will rot and reveal the hideous face of con­tem­po­rary Turkey and its auxiliaries.

A few hypotheses

The inter­ven­tion may end in one of sev­er­al ways, includ­ing of course a Turk­ish vic­to­ry and its dis­as­trous con­se­quences, but recent events do not sug­gest such a sce­nario. Turkey could also become bogged down and estab­lish a sta­tus quo on any of its advances. One or sev­er­al great pow­ers might use their posi­tions to stop the inva­sion and declare a no-fly zone if it is in their inter­est to defend Roja­va and/or if pub­lic opin­ions mobi­lize against the inter­ven­tion. The third option being that, fol­low­ing a mur­der­ous war, the Turk­ish troops are pushed back with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of attempt­ing the junc­tion of the can­tons of Afrin and of Kobané in the face of weak­ened Jihadist aux­il­iaries. Abdul­lah Öcalan, the PKK’s founder, jailed in Turkey since 1999, had said that the day Turkey would attack Roja­va would see the end of Erdo­gan. In this per­spec­tive, the YPG’s spokesman declared that the lib­er­a­tion of Azaz, Jarablus and Al-Bab had arrived (towns locat­ed between Kobané and Afrin that would serve to link the can­tons) as he had also announced for Raqqa dur­ing the bat­tle of Kobané.

The Iran-Rus­sia-Syr­i­an regime axis is tak­ing advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion to occu­py impor­tant seg­ments of ter­ri­to­ry in the Islamist rebel­lion zones of Ghou­ta and Idlib. The Jihadists being mobi­lized on the oth­er front, these ter­ri­to­ries become eas­i­er to seize.

The most uncer­tain sce­nario in all this remain­ing Turkey itself. How will the pop­u­la­tion react to an inva­sion cost­ly in human and mate­r­i­al terms? How will peo­ple react to the coffins com­ing home? How will the army react if pushed to the lim­it? Will dis­man­tling the CHP be as easy as Erdo­gan wish­es? Will the new dis­si­dent leader of the Grey Wolves (one of the main extreme Turk­ish right wing move­ments), Mer­al Aksen­er known as the she-wolf, take advan­tage of Erdo­gan’s dif­fi­cul­ties in Syr­ia? Once the snow melts, will the army be in a posi­tion to both attack Afrin and fight the gueril­la? Erdo­gan has no choice, he must push for­ward in order to impose his dic­ta­tor­ship. He can­not allow him­self a defeat and there­in lies the prob­lem. He has passed the point of no return and can­not back down. War and gen­er­al­ized repres­sion are his only means of stay­ing in pow­er. This is the most trou­bling part, an all-or-noth­ing for the dic­ta­tor. Erdo­gan knows what hap­pened to the last Islamist in pow­er in Turkey who want­ed to invade Syr­ia in the ear­ly six­ties. He was hung.

This sit­u­a­tion could push him into extreme mea­sures, as was the case for the Ottoman empire with the Armen­ian geno­cide. This geno­cide occurred in the con­text of the Ottomans’ defeat and faced with an Armen­ian pop­u­la­tion spread out over sev­er­al fron­tiers, as is the case for the Kurds. Con­cern is great, giv­en the many par­al­lels between the two sit­u­a­tions, with a Turkey sink­ing into decay and Kur­dish mas­sacres on a back­ground of neo-Ottoman­ism. To the Turk­ish pow­er’s vir­u­lent nation­al­ism is added a poi­so­nous islamism. The Kurds are now the ones who have become infi­dels and ene­mies with­in. The silence main­tained by West­ern pow­ers while Kur­dish towns were razed in Turkey speaks vol­umes on the risk to these populations.

The great­est dan­ger is not in the mil­i­tary defeat itself but in the lunge for­ward by the Turk­ish pres­i­dent at a piv­otal point in the his­to­ry of the Mid­dle-East. This is why a mobi­liza­tion by pub­lic opin­ion is more nec­es­sary than ever and why this inva­sion must urgent­ly be stopped, as must be the one who launched it.

Raphaël Lebru­jah


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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