​Turkey in Syria: A realignment, more than an opportunity or risk

TURKEY - In Brief 30 Dec 2018 by Atilla Yesilada

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I thought the best New Year’s gift to our audience will be to leave them alone during the festive season, because most political news from Turkey is bad news. Alas, the tradition continues and I must end the year with the prediction of the “first crisis in 2019”.As much as the word crisis is overused, it goes beyond doubt that Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw American forces precipitated a quantum flux, where predictions are always difficult and transient, because too many actors with ever-changing alliances are in the game. At first Trump’s pull-out was thought as an easy victory for Erdogan, who seemed to have received carte blanche to stump outthe Kurdish PYD-YPG political entity in the guise of taking over the fight against ISIS. A few nanoseconds later, Syrian Forces showed up at the outskirts of the contested Syrian city of Manbij (currently -de facto- under the control of PYD-YPG) and Russia declared North East Syria (where most Kurds live) must revert to the sovereignty of Assad, causing a 90-degree reversal of ”expert wisdom”, now predicting Erdogan yielding to Russian demands to make peace with Assad. Neither of these views is true, in my view. Nor do I agree with the much quoted WSJ article titled “For Turkey, U.S. Exit From Syria Is an Opportunity—and a Risk”, because this is the very definition of life, it is too cliché.Rather, I call for a realignment of Turkey with US and NATO. There are several reasons why Ankara can’t cede its claim over North-East Syria to Assad or make peace with him. Municipal elections:Losing votes on account of a poor economy, AKP counted on “the Campaign to liberate the East of Euphrates”, a euphemism for crashing the Kurdish ...