The siege of Kobani from September 2014 until January 2015 and its heroic defense by Kurdish forces in northern Syria was the turning point in the war against the Islamic State. Now, with the fall of the Assad regime, Kobani will once again play a key role in preventing a resurgence of the infamous terrorist group.

At that time, it was a combination of coalition air strikes and U.S. air drops of weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies, together with reinforcements of Kurdish peshmerga from Iraq, that delivered the victory. This also led to the U.S. decision to arm and train Syrian opposition forces, which resulted in the formation of the Kurdish-led SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) and paved the way for the defeat of ISIS at Raqqa in October 2017.

At the height of the battle, French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy criticized Turkey for choosing the Islamic State over the Kurds and Turkish president Erdogan, “whose judgment has been clouded by his obsessional fear of seeing an embryonic Kurdish state created just outside his border.”

Lévy compared the destruction of Kobane with that of Guernica, Coventry, Stalingrad, Sarajevo, Grozny, and Aleppo. “Because Kobane is not only a symbol but a key, its fall will be a catastrophe.” He concluded that as at Madrid, the world must declare, “They shall not pass.”

Now, we face a repetition of past events. In Turkey, the Kurdish struggle for some form of self-determination and cultural recognition has been blocked by Erdogan. The peace process with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which began with the Oslo talks and a ceasefire in 2013, was intended to gain support for his presidential ambitions. This culminated with the Dolmabahce Agreement, a ten-point peace plan agreed upon between the pro-Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) and the Turkish government in February 2015.

However, in March of that year, the HDP’s co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas, stated three times at an HDP meeting, “We will not make you the president.” In the June elections, the HDP gained eighty of the parliament’s 550 seats, and the governing AKP (Justice and Development Party) lost its overall majority. In July, the war with the PKK was reignited, and in a snap election in November, the AKP regained its majority.

A year later, Demirtas was jailed, and in 2017, a referendum accepted Erdogan’s plan for an executive presidency. In 2021, a move was made to ban the HDP, which morphed into the DEM (Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party). In May last year, Demirtas was sentenced to forty-two years in prison for his role in the 2014 protests against the Turkish government’s inaction during the siege of Kobani.

Perhaps with one eye on his legacy, in his New Year’s address, President Erdogan spoke of the need for unity. In another speech, he emphasized the unity of ethnic groups living in Turkey, calling Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Persians “brothers.” This no doubt hangs together with the initiative taken by his political ally, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the MHP (National Movement Party), to reach out to the DEM and coopt the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, in an attempt to find a solution to the Kurdish question.

However, this fails to harmonize with the removal of legally elected mayors and the suppression of Kurdish culture in Turkey.

With regard to Syria, the issue of Kurdish autonomy and the alliance between the United States and the SDF (Syrian Defence Forces) to combat ISIS constitutes a stumbling block for Turkey. At a meeting with Syria’s present leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan said there was no room for Kurdish militants and called for the YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia, the backbone of the SDF, to disband.   

John Sawers, former head of MI6 and UK ambassador to the UN, believes Erdogan seems to view Syria through the distorting prism of the Kurdish question. Although there is a parallel, veteran Kurdish politician Ahmed Türk rules out conflating the role of Turkey’s PKK with that of Syria’s PYD (Kurdish Democratic Union Party) in the pursuit of peace.      

When Assad’s forces pulled out of Syria’s mostly Kurdish northeastern Syria in 2012, the Kurds declared an autonomous administration known as Rojava. Its political wing, the PYD, is an affiliate of the PKK through its common membership of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union), an umbrella Kurdish organization.

Francesco Siccardi contends that Turkey’s policy in Syria has been driven by domestic politics, as its military operations in Syria are reflected in Erdogan’s approval ratings. For example, almost 90 percent supported Operation Olive Branch, Turkey’s invasion and occupation of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in 2018.

However, a shameful accompaniment of Turkey’s incursions is a documented list of atrocities committed by the so-called Syrian National Army, a motley collection of factions aligned with Ankara.

In October 2019, President Trump greenlighted a third Turkish cross-border operation into Syria, Operation Peace Spring, after a phone call with Turkey’s president. According to Trump, it was a “strategically brilliant” decision, but his nominee as national security advisor, Mike Waltz, considered it “a strategic mistake” at the time. 

A senior U.S. diplomat in northern Syria, William V. Roebuck, in a memo, called it “a catastrophic sideshow” and “an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing” with reference to Erdogan’s plan to replace the Kurdish population with Syrian refugees from Turkey. There was a similar displacement after the Turkish occupation of Afrin. 

After Assad’s collapse, the SNA drove the Kurds out of Tel Rifaat and moved on to Manbij. It is feared that Manbij will be the jumping-off point for an offensive against Kobani backed by Turkey. According to Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan, “it is only a matter of time before PKK/YPG is eliminated.” Erdogan has also stated Turkey is ready to intervene to prevent the “division” of Syria. 

There are also reports that the U.S.-led coalition has begun the construction of a military base in Kobani, but this has been denied by the Pentagon. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has admitted that there are now 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, more than twice the number previously thought to be deployed there. 

Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee as secretary of state, is a critic of Turkey’s foreign policy and human rights record. Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz also co-sponsored a bill to impose sanctions on Turkey because of their offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria.     

In view of the potential threat from a renewed Islamic State, some clarification of U.S. policy is needed.

Robert Ellis is a Turkey analyst and commentator. He is also an international advisor at RIEAS (Research Institute for European and American Studies) in Athens.

Image: Olmo Couto / Shutterstock.com.