BEIRUT — In the ever-shifting landscape of the Syrian civil war, the line between allies and enemies is rarely clear.
It was further muddied this week when the U.S.-led coalition revealed plans for a 30,000-strong security force to police Syria’s northeast borders with Turkey and Iran. The plan instantly enraged Turkey, a NATO ally of the U.S., because it would rely heavily on Kurdish fighters who are viewed as terrorists by the Turks.
“Is the duty of protecting NATO borders left to terror groups? We can protect our own borders,” said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States of betraying an ally and threatened to attack Kurdish “terror nests” along the border.
“Those who stabbed us in the back and appear to be our allies … cannot prevent it,” said Erdogan, according to an Anadolu report.
The establishment of the force also stands to rankle Syria’s government and its two main allies, Russia and Iran. It could derail a rapprochement between the Kurds and Damascus, who have worked together on occasion as reluctant allies against Islamic State, as well as against rebels trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
With the fight against Islamic State winding down, the coalition envisions that the Border Security Force would be stationed eastward, policing the militants’ traditional smuggling route between Iraq and Syria, as well as passageways with Turkey to the north. Those were once used by the group’s foreign fighters.
In his remarks, as reported by Anadolu, Erdogan said he did not “even think of calling U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss Syria,” adding that “as long as he does not turn to me, I do not turn to him.”
The Kurds are an ethnic group whose population ranges primarily through Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and has long sought an independent homeland. Syria’s Kurds have leveraged their alliance with the U.S. and the chaos in the country to carve out the beginnings of a semi-autonomous federation of provinces in the northern part of Syria.
Erdogan has long threatened to overrun Afrin, a Syrian town about 15 miles from the Turkish border. On Tuesday, three rebel commanders confirmed their participation in a new Turkish-backed campaign to oust the Kurds from areas in Syria’s north.
Turkey’s army chief, Gen. Hulusi Akar, told his counterparts at a NATO meeting in Brussels that his country would not allow the Kurds “to be supported and armed under the guise of being an ‘operational partner’ (of the U.S.).”
