Erdogan says he will do whatever it takes to prevent a Kurdish state

Commentators in the Arabic press discuss what will make Turkey intervene in the Syrian conflict, featuring Al Sharq and Al Quds Al Arabi.

Syrian men walk amidst the rubble of the Qadi Askar district of Aleppo. Zein Al Rifai / AFP

Whether recent developments in Syria will lead Turkey into a military intervention is one of the key topics being discussed in the Arabic media.

Writing in the Doha-based newspaper Al Sharq, Kemal Öztürk said spillover from the Syrian conflict was beginning to compromise Turkey’s stability.

The challenges include the Kurds, the Alawites, the Shiite expansion, the rise of Turkish nationalism and the high costs of hosting 1.7 million Syrian refugees. This affected the recent parliamentary elections and caused the ruling AKP to lose ground to the nationalists and Kurdish parties, he wrote.

Military action in Syria has been widely debated in Turkey, especially after the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) seized control of many areas in north Syria, leading to reports that its fighters were planning to declare an autonomous area.

Ankara would interpret such a move from the PYD as the first step towards a Kurdish state, with the second step being taking a chunk of the Turkish territory. The PYD is a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has fought the Turkish state for decades.

He said that if the PYD militants, who have received support from the international coalition fighting ISIL, gain control over northern Syria, Turkey’s territorial integrity will be on the line. There have been reports of Arab and Turkmen communities being mistreated and displaced from the PYD-controlled areas. The group would also be able to export oil coming from Erbil through northern Syria and the Mediterranean.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country will do whatever it takes to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Syria. Another influx of Syrian refugees – possibly including PYD militants crossing to the western side of the Euphrates to attack the city of Jarabulus – could also prompt a military response from Ankara.

But Kemal predicted Turkey will not deploy intense military force on Syrian soil because of dissent from the main opposition parties. A full-blown war against the PYD and the PKK in Syria would also prompt their loyalists inside Turkey to take to the streets and cause chaos.

Ankara will likely act by deploying long-range artillery along the Syrian border and wage air strikes, with a focus on preventing the PYD-held areas from becoming unified, he said.

Writing in the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi, Mohammed Zahid Gul noted that although Turkish-Syrian relations have gone from friendly to hostile and their forces have clashed on several occasions, neither side was willing to enter a war.

Although Ankara had to side with the Syrian people because of the refugee issue, it did not want to get involved in the conflict. An exception was when Turkish troops relocated the tomb of Suleiman Shah from Aleppo.

Turkey does not intend to involve its army in the Syria conflict and is willing to fight ISIL only if its terms are accepted. Ankara, Gul wrote, will do everything in its power to prevent a southern front being opened. It is trying to explain this position to Russia, Europe, Iran, the Arab states, the US and, indirectly, to the Assad regime.

Gul maintained that Turkey will intervene in Syria only to protect its territories and its stability. Any intervention would only be temporary and to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Syria. It will not seek to fight Kurdish or Arab people in Syria.

He said the Assad regime’s decision to support the PYD to retaliate against Ankara’s support for Syrian opposition groups would backfire, especially because most Kurds are against the PKK.

In Al Quds Al Arabi, Ayman Khaled said the US wishes Turkey would intervene soon in Syria. Although he said a Turkish intervention will come, it will probably not happen until 2017-2018. Turkey is pursuing “military diplomacy”, aiming to send messages to the parties that are prolonging the war.

Turkey has no interest in intervening in the Syrian war before then because the Americans and the Iranians still carry the burden of the war and are trying to find others who can share this burden with them, he wrote.

This is particularly true after the Houthis in Yemen became entangled in a war that will take years, after Iran failed to make significant gains in Iraq and after the US failed to anticipate what is happening in Egypt, and particularly in the Sinai, where the conflict is attracting extremists from Africa who could harm European business interests in the Suez Canal.

Translated by Abdelhafid Ezzouitni