Turkey Seeks To Prevent Kurdish Autonomy, Not Fight IS, Analysts Suggest

Plans by Turkey and the United States to create an "Islamic State-free zone" in northern Syria along the Turkish border will serve Ankara's aims of stopping Kurdish militias from advancing in the area, analysts and Kurdish political leaders say.

The plan follows significant gains by the Kurdish People's Protection Units militia (YPG) against the IS militant group in northern Syria.Last month, the YPG seized Tal Abyad, a key IS-held town, with the assistance of U.S. air strikes and Syrian Arab fighters. In doing so, the YPG cut off a major IS supply route but prompted thousands of Syrians to flee across the border to Turkey. On July 27, the YPG captured another town from IS, Sarrin near the Euphrates River, which IS fighters were using to launch attacks on Kobani close to the Turkish border.

The YPG's gains against IS have caused consternation bordering on hysteria in Ankara, which fears Kurdish autonomy.After the capture of Tal Abyad, supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) cautioned that the Kurds were on their way to creating their own state in northern Syria. One headline even warned that the YPG was "more dangerous than IS," says Mutlu Civiroglu, a Kurdish-affairs analyst based in Washington.

"Turkey thinks that the YPG's next move is to cross the Euphrates River and move to Jarablus," says Civiroglu, referring to an IS-occupied and predominantly Arab and Turkmen town on the west side of the Euphrates.The YPG could then move further west and eventually link up the Kobani and Afrin "cantons," zones in northern and northeastern Syria that are under Kurdish control.Kurdish control of more territory in the area would pose a "threat to Turkey's territorial autonomy," says Kubilay Yado Arin, a Kurdish scholar at Duke University.

"Turkey does not want an integrated autonomous Kurdish region" on its border, Arin adds.

Arin suggested the "safe zone" proposed by Turkey in northern Syria is a ploy by Ankara to bring thousands of Syrian refugees from Turkey into the area in an attempt to "divide Kurdish territory."
Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the Kurdish-majority Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey, also said that the "IS-free zone" proposed by Ankara was designed to prevent Kurds from forming their own territory in northern Syria.Demirtas told the BBC on July 29 that Turkey's recent operations against IS were "a show." "Under the impression of battling IS, Kurdish forces are being targeted," Demirtas said.

Turkey launched air strikes against IS in Syria for the first time on July 24. But Ankara also targeted the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. And on July 27, the YPG claimed that Turkish tanks had shelled their fighters near Kobani.