Rather than sanctioning Turkey, the international community should be supporting its fight against terrorism in northern Syria and as the last nation militarily involved that is actively opposing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
While the official Ankara view runs counter to the way that many in the United States and Europe view the situation, it is how Egemen Bagis, an influential Turkish official who has made frequent trips to Ukraine, defended the Oct. 14 start of “Operation Peace Spring.”
Bagis has been appointed as the Turkish ambassador to the Czech Republic, but has served as the nation’s former European Union minister and chief negotiator for EU accession and is a former member of parliament. He has also visited Ukraine numerous times, speaking in September at Victor Pinchuk’s annual Yalta European Strategy conference.
“Turkey is currently fighting a number of terrorist organizations that present risk and threat to our national security,” Bagis told the Kyiv Post, when asked for comment on the Turkish military incursion into previously Kurdish-held northeastern Syria. The offensive came after U.S. President Donald J. Trump ordered U.S. troops out of the country a week ago.
“Our resolve to fight against these terrorist organizations is firm. It is with this understanding that we have given our full support to all international efforts to this end since day one,” Bagis said. “The issue of foreign terrorist fighters can be effectively dealt with only by collective action by the international community. The United Nations Secretary General, the president of the United Nations Security Council and the secretary general of NATO are being notified of the start of this operation in writing. We are also delivering a verbal note to the Syrian Consulate General in İstanbul.”
Bagis’ other points, in an e-mail change in which we agreed to follow up with a phone interview:
- Having successfully concluded Operation Euphrates Shield in 2017 and Operation Olive Branch in 2018, Turkey cleared an area over 4,000 square kilometers from DEASH (Islamic Sate) and (Syrian Kurdish) PYD/YPG terror, allowing more than 360,000 Syrians to return to their homes in this area.
- The threat of terrorism originating from Syria and targeting our borders, has not yet ended. During the last two years, especially from the east of the Euphrates River, we have been exposed to over a hundred cases of hostile acts by (Syrian Kurdish) PYD/YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the (Kurdish) PKK terrorist organization.
- Through tunnels dug by Kurdish PYD/YPG along the bordering areas in this region, explosives and ammunition have been smuggled to Turkey to be handed over to the PKK terrorist organization.
- PYD/YPG has perpetrated terrorist attacks also within Syria and against Syrians. Northwest Syria is a particular case in point. So far, more than 220 PYD/YPG attacks have been recorded according to PYD/YPG-affiliated open sources.
- There is credible evidence that DEASH terrorists detained by PYD/YPG were released in exchange of infiltrating into Turkey or northwest Syria in order to conduct terrorist acts.
- There has been growing evidence about PYD/YPG’s human rights violations such as recruiting child soldiers, intimidating dissidents, demographic engineering and forced conscription in areas under its control. The local population’s grievances against PYD/YPG’s tyrannical rule has been on constant rise.
- Our expectations and sensitivities regarding the PYD/YPG threat were repeatedly brought to the attention of all our allies, beginning with those who have military and civilian presence in the east of Euphrates, especially the U.S.
- Our talks with the U.S. on the establishment of a safe zone with a view to addressing our legitimate security concerns and sustaining the fight against DEASH has remained inconclusive.
- Through all contacts, we emphasized that, if necessary, we would not hesitate to use our right of self-defense stemming from international law, at a time, form and location of our choice.
- We reiterated that Turkey should not be expected to tolerate the presence of terrorists at its borders. The presence of terrorist groups pursuing separatist agendas also threatens the territorial integrity and unity of Syria.
- Against this backdrop, the Turkish Armed Forces is launching today “Operation Peace Spring”.
- The objective of this operation will be to ensure our border security, neutralize terrorists in the region and thus, save Syrians from the oppression and cruelty of these terrorists.
- The operation will be carried out on the basis of the international law, in accordance with our right to self-defense as outlined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and the relevant Security Council resolutions 1373(2001), 1624(2005), 2170(2014) and 2178(2014), 2249(2015) and 2254(2015) and in full respect of Syria’s territorial integrity and unity.
- As was the case with Operations Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch, only terrorist elements and their hideouts, shelters, emplacements, weapons, vehicles and equipment will be targeted during the planning and execution phases of the operation.
- Bases and observation posts in the operation area belonging to our allies are not targets. Channels of military deconfliction will remain open and functional.
- We intend to continue the operation until all terrorists have been wiped out of the region, our border security has been ensured, and local Syrians have been liberated from the tyranny of PYD/YPG as well as the DEASH threat.
- The operation also aims to support the international efforts to facilitate safe and voluntary returns of displaced Syrians to their homes of origin or other places of their choice in Syria in line with international law and in coordination with relevant UN agencies.
- Turkey has no plans whatsoever to modify the demographic structure in the operation area. To the contrary, this counter-terror operation is intended also to facilitate the returns of Syrians who had been displaced due to acts of PYD/YPG amounting to crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing.
- Turkey’s counter-terrorism efforts in Syria will also contribute to the territorial integrity and unity of Syria by disrupting separatist agendas.
- As the only country engaging in chest-to-chest combat against DEASH in Syria, the future of detained DEASH terrorists is of paramount importance for Turkey. The only sustainable solution is repatriation of all foreign terrorist fighters by their countries of origin.
Europe and the United States, obviously, don’t agree. The EU and America have adopted sanctions, but nothing severe. “It’s notable that the sanctions announced (on Oct. 14 by Trump) are too soft to appease Turkey hawks in Congress,” noted Timothy Ash, a London-based analyst who specialize on Ukraine and Turkey. “Unless Turkey’s Syria operation ends very soon, I think we see Congress come up with something much more severe and detrimental to Turkey.”
Trump gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to go ahead after telling his counterpart that he would pull out all U.S. troops, which had been protecting the Kurdish-governed northeastern part of Syria. There have been accusations of civilian slaughter and mass executions at the hands of Turkish forces or their aligned militias against the Kurds, who decided to align with Assad rather than the invading Turks. The new charges of war crimes add to many in the war that has killed 500,000 people and displaced more than six million others. From the Russian bombings of hospitals to Assad’s chemical-weapons attacks on civilians in the eight-year war, this has been a barbaric conflict and more is yet to come.
But as weak as the US and EU sanctions are, Ash noted disapprovingly that sanctions against a NATO ally making an incursion into Syria were made quickly, while the West has done nothing about Russia’s war crimes in Syria.
“It is still pretty remarkable/ironic to think that Russia has engaged in a brutal bombing campaign in Syria since 2015, and the US/EU have not imposed Syria-related sanctions,” Ash wrote. “But Turkey intervenes across its border to stop what it sees as a terrorist threat, and gets sanctioned by the EU and the US, despite its NATO status.”
