The Economist Asia - 27.01.2018

36 The EconomistJanuary27th 2018

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EVENTY-TWO Turkish fighter jets cut

through the skies above north-west Syr-

ia on January 20th, dropping bombs on the

Kurdish enclave of Afrin, while thousands

of Turkish troops massed at the border.

They were joined by busloads of Syrian re-

bels, Turkey’s proxies in the fight against

Bashar al-Assad’s blood-soaked regime in

Damascus. So it was that Turkey opened a

new front in the Syrian war, and in its un-

ending conflict with Kurdish insurgents,

with reverberations rippling to Washing-

ton, Moscow and Istanbul.

The offensive pitsNATO’s second-big-

gest army against a Kurdish militia called

the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which

Turkey says is a branch of its domestic foe,

the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The

separatistPKKhas fought an on-off insur-

gency against Turkish security forces for

over three decades. But the YPGis best

known for fighting Islamic State (IS) in Syr-

ia. American support, in the form of weap-

ons and air strikes, helped the Kurds repel

the jihadists and, to Turkey’s dismay, take

control of vast stretches of land in the

north (see next story). When America said

it would create a 30,000-strong “border-se-

curity force” in north-east Syria consisting

largely ofYPGfighters, Recep Tayyip Erdo-

gan, Turkey’s president, vowed to “strangle

it before it is born”.

The incursion, which is inexplicably

general staff, Hulusi Akar, has said he will

push forward “until we eliminate every

terrorist”. Other officials liken the offen-

sive to one in 2016 that saw Turkey wrest

from ISa 100km stretch of Syrian territory

west of the Euphrates river. The jihadists

hardly put up a fight and local Arabs and

Turkoman welcomed the Turks as libera-

tors. (Turkish troops and Syrian rebels are

still in control of the area.) “We’re hoping to

repeat this example in Afrin,” says Bekir

Bozdag, Turkey’sdeputy prime minister.

But the Turks will face a much tougher

fight in Afrin. Around 10,000 battle-hard-

ened YPGfighters are in the area. Local

Kurds, who are most of the enclave’s

600,000 or so residents, seem uniformly

hostile to the Turks and their Syrian allies.

The YPGhas closed roads out of the city,

while the Assad regime turns back those

who manage to leave. According to the Syr-

ian Observatoryfor Human Rights, a Brit-

ain-based monitoring group, at least 28 ci-

vilians, 42 Kurdish fighters and 48 Syrian

rebels were killed in the first five days of

the operation. Officials in Ankara con-

firmed the deaths of three Turkish soldiers

and claimed to have killed 268 militants.

Rockets believed to have been fired by the

YPGkilled three people in the Turkish

towns of Kilis and Reyhanli.

America is caught in the middle—and

sending out mixed messages. The Penta-

gon hopes to continue using the Kurds as a

bulwark against Islamist militancy in Syria.

The White House, though, has disavowed

plans to create a new Kurdish-led force and

downplayed America’s relationship with

the Kurds. In general, American officials

have been loth to criticise Turkey, but in a

phone call with Mr Erdogan on January

25th, President Donald Trump expressed

concern about the violence in Afrin. So

called Operation Olive Branch, appears to

enjoy wide support across Turkey. The me-

dia have whipped themselves into a

nationalist frenzy almost as big as the one

that followed an abortive coup in 2016. Of

the four main parties in parliament, only

one, a pro-Kurdish outfit whose leaders

have been locked up for over a year, re-

fused to support the offensive. Mr Erdogan

argues that an emboldened YPGplans to

use the Syrian borderlands in the same

way as the PKKhas used the mountains of

northern Iraq: as a launching pad for at-

tacks against Turkey. Most Turks seem to

agree with him.

The stubborn sultan

Mr Erdogan has ways of dealing with those

who do not. Having caught wind of possi-

ble protests, he pledged to “crush anyone

who opposes our national struggle” and

warned that police would be “breathing

down the necks” of those who took to the

streets. Dozens of people, including at least

five journalists, have been detained for so-

cial-media posts criticising the offensive. In

Northern Cyprus crowds of Turkish na-

tionalists attacked the office of a local

newspaper that likened Operation Olive

Branch to Turkey’s invasion of the island in

1974—ie, an illegal occupation.

The precise aims (and limits) ofthe op-

eration are unclear. Turkey’s chief of the

The war in Syria (1)

Into the abyss

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria complicates an already chaotic war

Middle East and Africa

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37 The Kurds of Syria

38 Less aid for the Palestinians

38 Notes for former colonies

39 Integrity idols

39 Political prisoners in Ethiopia

40 Land reform in South Africa

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