President-elect Donald Trump’s coming second term leads Kurds in Syria to believe they face an existential threat from Turkey.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan considers Syrian Kurds and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria they run to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group Turkey labels terrorists, and the U.S. designates as such.
The reality is more complex. In 2014, as Erdoğan tacitly supported the Islamic State, the United States partnered with Syrian Kurds to break the Islamic State siege of Kobane, and ultimately roll back and defeat the Islamic State. Today, Syrian Kurds control the al-Hol prison that contains thousands of Islamic State prisoners whom they could not repatriate to European or Arab countries. The Syrian Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Forces they dominate may share intellectual links to PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, but they are distinct and have not been a security threat to Turkey ever since. Across U.S. administrations, the Pentagon has found them to be a force multiplier and pro-Western in orientation.
Erdoğan sought to co-opt the Kurds, including groups in Turkey with similar intellectual links to the PKK. When Turkey’s Kurds refused to subordinate their Kurdish identity to Erdoğan’s Islamist vision, he turned on them, imprisoning politicians, jailing followers, and ousting elected mayors. The same irrationality governs Erdoğan’s attitude toward Syria’s Kurds. In 2019, for example, after speaking to Erdoğan by telephone, Trump tweeted that the United States would withdraw its forces in favor of Turkey. The move caused panic among the Kurds, shocked those in the Pentagon who understood Turkey’s double-dealing, and ultimately led Defense Secretary James Mattis to resign.
When Turkey’s Kurds refused to subordinate their Kurdish identity to Erdoğan’s Islamist vision, he turned on them.
Fearing chaos and Islamic State resurgence, U.S. Central Command scrambled to reach understandings with Turkey to limit its incursion into Syria. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) warned Turkey not to invade and tweeted solidarity with the Kurds.
Erdoğan celebrated Trump’s recent win like no other world leader. Erdoğan believes not only that Trump will defer to him, but also that Trump allies like Elon Musk will as well. Erdoğan wants to rebuild the U.S.-Turkey relationship that has declined for years as Erdoğan has reoriented Turkey toward Russia and Muslim Brotherhood groups and terrorist groups in Syria, and away from the West. On November 6, 2024, independent candidate-turned-Trump ally Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., confirmed that Trump wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Kurds now believe they will face renewed genocide, not only in Syria where Turkish forces and proxies previously ethnically cleansed Afrin, but also in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Erdoğan told Turkish journalists that the Turkish strategic plan is to go deep, perhaps 25 miles, into Iraq and Syria to create a “security zone” to bolster Turkish national security. In Syria especially, this likely would amount to wholesale ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people, given that the majority of the region’s Kurds live within that zone.
Rather than acquiesce to Erdoğan, the incoming Trump team should stand up to Erdoğan and recognize that both his cynicism and his neo-Ottoman vision will fundamentally destabilize the region and lead to a terror resurgence. For Erdoğan, any Kurdish party and status that does not serve Turkey’s interests are “terrorists.” The only Kurds whom Erdoğan accepts today are Kurdish Hezbollah, a group that prioritizes Islamism above Kurdish identity; the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraq, an entity whose leaders sold out Kurdish nationalism for Turkish cash; and those Kurds who work within Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman expansionism is entrenched in Turkey’s National Pact that Ankara uses to justify Turkish expansion into Aleppo and Mosul.
For Erdoğan, any Kurdish party and status that does not serve Turkey’s interests are “terrorists.”
Should Erdoğan hoodwink Trump, the ramifications will be tremendous. The existence of self-governing Kurds on Turkey’s border may offend Erdoğan, but the Syrian Kurds both prevent the Islamic State from regaining territorial control and disrupt Iran’s land bridge to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Forcing a mass displacement of Kurds would send waves of refugees to the European Union’s border, allowing both Erdoğan and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to further blackmail the West. Already, some Kurds try to reach the United States via Mexico.
For Trump to greenlight a Turkish invasion of Syrian Kurdish districts would be to strengthen Assad’s regime and Iranian proxies and negate the benefits that Trump hopes to gain by re-imposing the “Maximum Pressure” policy on Iran, especially given Turkey’s continued sanction busting for Iran. The re-emergence of Islamic State terrorists will undermine years of U.S.-led efforts to eradicate the group.
Erdoğan does not respect Trump; rather, he sees a man whom he can steamroll with sweet nothings and empty promises. If Trump wishes to focus U.S. efforts on countering China, it is essential that he not sow the seeds of renewed chaos in the Middle East that will draw U.S. forces back into the region.
