The Turkish incursion into Syria needs to focus on the main task of eliminating Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and not get side-tracked into pursuing Turkey’s own agenda of attacking the Syrian Kurds. After years of keeping out of the growing chaos of the Syrian civil war, Turkish troops entered Syria this week on a joint mission to attack both Daesh, and to attack the Syrian Kurdish militia, the PYD, which Turkey regards as a terrorist group — thanks to their links to the PKK, the Kurdish militia that operates inside Turkey.
There is a danger that the Turkish forces on the ground will spend their energies in attacking the Kurds and only make a modest contribution to the international coalition that is focused on eliminating Daesh. This will be similar to the tactics adopted by Russian forces backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who have failed to make Daesh their main target and focused on becoming part of the Syrian civil war by backing the regime against the various Syrian opposition forces.
The Turks should concentrate on eliminating the global threat that is posed by terrorist groups like Daesh as they destroy nation states, the rule of law and seek to spread their abomination wider in the region.
One of the many contradictions of the Syrian civil war is that Turkey is working with the United States-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), which evicted Daesh from Jarablus, a town less than a kilometre away from the Turkish border. But the FSA is largely made up of Syrian Kurds, which illustrates Turkey’s willingness to work with whom they must, and the FSA so far has proved to be the most effective non-Islamic opposition force.
In fact, Washington is keen to find more non-Kurdish Syrian soldiers to join the FSA in order to make it more representative of Syria’s ethnic and sectarian mix.
At the start of the Syrian civil war, Turkey refused to let its troops cross the border, even for humanitarian missions, such as creating a corridor to allow civilians to flee and supplies to enter, or imposing no-fly zones to stop the regime from bombing its own people. As a result, the war became increasingly violent until it engulfed the whole country and devastated its people. The change of Turkish tactics this week should focus on ending the Syrian war rather than taking part in it.
