The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is taking Turkey’s threats seriously and is expecting a Turkish ground operation in February, the SDF’s commander Mazloum Abdi told Al Monitor in an interview published on Monday.
Turkey since 2018 has organised several military incursions into Syria, claiming the SDF and its military wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG) pose a national security threat due to its links with the Kurdistan Workers’s Party (PKK).
Following a deadly explosion in Istanbul in November that Turkey attributed to Kurdish groups (though these accusations were unanimously denied), airstrikes were launched against the YPG in the Kurdish-majority Rojava region in North Syria. Since then, Turkish officials have repeatedly stated that a ground operation will follow airstrikes but facing the objection of both the United States and Russia, Turkey has not yet taken further action. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın on Saturday said that a ground operation could happen “at any time”.
“We take Turkey’s threats seriously. We expect an attack in February. The town of Kobane is a likely target because of its symbolic meaning for Kurds world over,” Abdi said, referring to Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syrian town.
“Turkey is heading for elections, and we are aware that President Erdoğan wants to rally nationalist support and he appears to believe that attacking Rojava again can serve this purpose,” he added.
The commander underlined that the SDF does not pose any threat to Turkey and instead wants peaceful relations with Ankara. Abdi also refused Ankara’s claims that the YPG is the Syrian extension of the PKK.
“I am a Syrian Kurd. My future is here in this country. The PKK did help in the fight against the Islamic State [ISIS] for sure. But today, the PKK has no role in our administration. We are not, as Turkey claims, a branch of the PKK. We are not. We are separate,” he said.
The commander accepted that Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK who has been in prison in Turkey since 1999, was a symbol for Kurds everywhere, including Rojava.
Abdi said the SDF neither had any plans for other parts of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iraq or Iran nor wished to be embroiled in, or become scapegoats for Turkey’s failure to resolve its own Kurdish problem.
Abdi also said that he did not believe that the Russia-brokered rapprochement efforts between Turkey and Syria would succeed.
“The Syrian regime will never compromise on its own demands. Chief among them is that Turkey withdraw all its troops from Syrian soil and that Turkey withdraw its support to the armed Sunni opposition groups,” the commander said.
“By the same token, I do not believe that the Syrian regime would yield to Turkey’s demands to crush the autonomous administration in the northeast,” Abdi added referring to the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava. “It neither has the means to do this, nor are circumstances favourable to any such plans,” he said.
