The rapid collapse of the Assad regime by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters has put Syrian Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and their autonomous entity in northeastern Syria in an increasingly precarious position as Turkey and its proxy Syrian National Army (SNA) fighters have taken advantage of the situation to advance on Kurdish-controlled towns. Although the Biden administration, which has supported the SDF, has indicated that it plans to keep the 900 US troops in northeastern Syria to maintain the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS), it has also compelled the Kurds to abandon their holdings on the west side of the Euphrates River, particularly the town of Manbij, which Turkey has long sought to control.
For the time being, the SDF will still be supported by the United States east of the Euphrates, but all bets are off once Donald Trump is sworn in as president next month. Trump may decide to pull all US troops out of Syria, as he wanted to do during his first presidential term. He will be encouraged by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a longtime opponent of US support for these Syrian Kurds, whom he has labeled “terrorists” and considers a greater threat to Turkish national security than IS. If the Trump administration does withdraw US troops, there is a good chance that Turkey and its Syrian allies would try to destroy the Kurdish-led autonomous entity.
Kurds Under Military Pressure from Turkey and Its SNA Allies…
With the international community’s eyes focused on HTS’s movement in recent weeks as it took, in rapid succession, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and finally Damascus, less attention was paid to the advances of the Turkish proxy force, the SNA, against Kurdish-controlled towns in northern Syria. The town of Tel Rifaat fell quickly to the SNA, which soon moved on Manbij, just west of the Euphrates River, a city that Turkey has long wanted to deny to the Kurds. The SNA has also mounted an offensive on Kobane, which lies just across the border from Turkey. The SDF has claimed that these offensive military moves by Turkey and its SNA allies have compelled it to reduce the number of its personnel guarding the prisons housing IS militants in order to aid their comrades fighting these Turkish-backed forces.
Less attention was paid to the advances of the Turkish proxy force, the SNA, against Kurdish-controlled towns in northern Syria.
Erdoğan has long maintained that the Kurdish fighters of the SDF, mostly affiliated with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), are an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, long ago designated by Turkey as a terrorist group. Accordingly, Erdoğan wants the SDF and Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), severely weakened or, ideally, destroyed. The previous name of the AANES was “Rojava,” meaning “west” in the Syrian Kurdish dialect, referring to what these Kurds consider the western part of traditional Kurdistan. The new name was adopted to give the entity less of an exclusive Kurdish designation and more of an inclusive one that encompasses the different ethnic and religious groups in the area, among them a sizable Arab Sunni Muslim population and various Christian groups. Although ethnic Arabs make up a majority of the SDF fighters, the force’s officers are predominantly Kurdish.
Although Erdoğan has ordered hundreds of air strikes against SDF positions in recent years, and controlled a border corridor in northeastern Syria since 2019, he has not been able to end US support for the SDF. President Joe Biden, with whom Erdoğan has had a frosty relationship, and the US military establishment, believe the SDF have been the best fighters in Syria against IS and appreciate their fighting prowess and sacrifices (the SDF says it lost more than 11,000 casualties) in the anti-IS campaign. The SDF also has remained in charge of several large prison camps holding thousands of multinational IS fighters and their family members. While the United States has put pressure on various governments to take back their citizens, the results have been mixed so far. Throughout his presidency Biden gave no indication that he was interested in withdrawing the 900 US special forces from this region, who have given important logistical and military support to the SDF in these roles, and has reaffirmed his commitment to keep troops there as the Assad regime collapsed. The US presence has arguably been more relevant in recent months because, as tracked by US Central Command, there has been an uptick in IS attacks in 2024 from various IS cells that have remained in northeastern Syria.
…and Some Pressure from the United States
Although sympathy for the Syrian Kurds may be a factor, what is really driving the Biden administration’s policy in Syria right now is a desire to prevent a power vacuum which IS could exploit to rebuild itself. Indeed, on December 8, just hours after the Assad regime collapsed, Biden ordered airstrikes against 75 IS targets using B-52 bombers, F-15 warplanes, and A-10 Warthog aircraft. CENTCOM commander General Erik Kurilla warned: “There should be no doubt – we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria.”
SNA advances against SDF positions alarmed the US because they could jeopardize the anti-IS campaign.
SNA advances against SDF positions alarmed the United States because they could divert troops from the anti-IS campaign and jeopardize the SDF’s protection of IS prison camps. This is a main reason why top US officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III, CIA Director Bill Burns, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, called their Turkish counterparts, and what led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visit Turkey on December 12 to try to stop the SNA advance and to re-focus Turkey on the IS threat. According to the Pentagon readout of Austin’s phone conversation with Turkish National Defense Minister Yaşar Güler, the two officials agreed to “prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to US forces and partners.”
The United States also acknowledged Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.” Blinken, for his part, told Erdoğan that “it was imperative to work against the resurgence” of IS, adding that “our country worked very hard and gave a lot over many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of IS, to ensure that threat doesn’t rear its head again.” While Erdoğan agreed not to ease up on the anti-IS fight, he also vowed not to let up in Turkey’s pursuit of groups it sees as a threat to its national security—a not-so-veiled reference to the SDF. The last comment undoubtedly was unsettling to the YPG’s Syrian Kurds, who make up the bulk of the Kurdish component of the force.
It appears that, as part of these discussions, the United States and Turkey worked out an arrangement in which the SDF would withdraw from Manbij, and Turkey and its SNA allies would not advance east of the Euphrates River. Kurilla even traveled to eastern Syria on December 10 to ensure that the deal was being carried out. However, the SDF has said this truce arrangement broke down soon after, charging that, despite US efforts to stop the conflict, “Turkey and its mercenary allies (meaning the SNA) have continued to escalate” the fighting. The SDF maintains that Turkey has not allowed the safe transfer of civilians and fighters from Manbij as per the arrangement, and is building up its military forces west of Kobane, which is located east of the Euphrates, for an attack on it. Ominously, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the media on December 13 that “our strategic goal is to eliminate the YPG,” while other Turkish officials are reportedly pressing the United States to allow it to deploy three commando brigades to replace the SDF in the anti-IS mission and to assume responsibility for guarding several detention centers housing IS fighters and their families. Responding to these threats, retired US General Jack Keane, an informal advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, denounced Turkish actions against the Syrian Kurds and claimed that Trump would be very tough on Erdoğan on this issue, but that remains to be seen.
Uncertainty Over the Kurds’ Relations with Syria’s New Leaders
In the meantime, it is unclear what the relationship between the AANES and the HTS leadership will be now that the latter is ensconced in Damascus. Because the Assad regime never countenanced Kurdish autonomy in Syria, there were no tears shed by the Syrian Kurds when the Assad government collapsed, especially as the occasional talks that the Kurds had with Assad regime officials over the past few years never succeeded. Yet throughout the Syrian civil war, the Syrian opposition (made up of disparate groups) was not willing to accept Kurdish autonomy either, nor did they accept the idea of a federal state. Moreover, HTS’s Islamist ideology (and its al-Qaeda roots) makes officials of the AANES nervous, as the entity they created is secular. An official of the US-based Syrian Democratic Council, the political affiliate of the SDF, stated recently, “Is this group [HTS] going to create a secular Syria, a moderate democratic Syria, to have all the Syrian people in the new government? This is the question. What about the Kurds? What about the Alawite people?”
So far, the HTS leadership has not commented on the status of the AANES, nor has it made any major military moves against SDF positions in this area. Ideally, Syrian Kurdish leaders of the AANES and their allies in this autonomous entity would like to enter into discussions with HTS about their desire for a federal state, but that remains to be seen. At a minimum, HTS leaders (as well as most Syrians) would probably want all the oil fields in the Deir Ezzor region, currently controlled by Arab tribal components of the SDF), to return to central government control, but holding on to them, at least in the short term, gives the SDF some leverage. But even this leverage may now be in doubt. The leader of the Hajin branch of the SDF’s Deir Ezzor Military Council, Abu al–Harith al-Shu’ayti, declared recently that he was defecting from the SDF and pledged allegiance to the HTS-led movement.
All Eyes Are on the Incoming Trump Administration
Although Biden administration officials have tried their best to halt a major SNA-SDF conflagration, everyone realizes that this US administration has just a month left in office and is in a wait-and-see mode. Erdoğan, who warmly congratulated Trump on his electoral win, is undoubtedly hoping he will be able to rekindle his friendship and influence with the incoming US president and have as close a relationship with him as he did last time. It is important to remember that after the Trump-Erdoğan telephone calls of December 2018 and October 2019, Trump, to the surprise and consternation of officials in his own administration as well as leading members of Congress, agreed with Erdoğan’s request to pull all US troops out of northeastern Syria. Trump then backtracked from this pledge (though he did reduce the number of troops from 2,000 to 900), after officials in his own administration objected to the move, and he was assured that most of Syria’s oil fields would be secured by US forces.
Trump agreed with Erdoğan’s request to pull all US troops out of northeastern Syria only to backtrack later.
Trump has not commented definitively on the US troop presence in northeastern Syria since his reelection, but he did issue a statement on X after the fall of the Assad regime, stating, “Syria is a mess, but it is not our friend, & the United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!” Whether this means he will remove the 900 US troops from northeastern Syria is anyone’s guess, but Trump may be inclined to do so, despite the objections of some congressional allies and his incoming top officials.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of Trump’s closet allies in Congress, said that he would draft legislation to impose sanctions on Turkey “if they engage in military operations against Kurdish forces who helped President Trump destroy ISIS.” And Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is slated to be Trump’s secretary of state, and former Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), whom Trump has chosen as his national security advisor, have been critical of Turkey for its relations with Russia, its policies against Cyprus, and its actions against Syrian Kurds. Whether Graham, Rubio, and others may be able to persuade Trump to keep US troops in Syria is unknown, but Trump may feel stronger in his second term to resist such pressure.
If Trump does decide to withdraw American soldiers from northeastern Syria, there is a good possibility that Erdoğan will order Turkish troops and their SNA allies to invade the area in an even deeper incursion than before, citing “national security” reasons against “terrorists,” with the aim of destroying the SDF and the AANES. One SDF official, citing the possibility of a Turkish-led invasion, vowed, “We will resist fiercely” and that “we are far better prepared [than in] 2019” (when Turkey and the SNA invaded the border region and established a corridor). But such comments may be bravado, hiding genuine fears that their experiment in autonomy over the past decade may indeed be in jeopardy soon.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: US DoD/William Gore
