Why does Turkey want to invade Syria?

A stretch of land 32km wide is causing a global crisis, with fears of looming chaos that could lead to the revival of Islamic State.

Within 24 hours of Donald Trump’s shock announcement that the US was pulling out of northern Syria, Turkish warplanes began bombing Kurdish targets near the border in preparation for an invasion.

The move was slammed by US-backed Kurdish forces, who suffered thousands of casualties in the fight against Islamic State, as a “stab in the back”, but the US President defended his decision even amid condemnation from dedicated supporters.

Here’s what you need to know about the Turkey-Syria crisis.

WHAT DOES TURKEY WANT?

• Turkey wants the establishment of a “safe zone” extending 32km into northern Syria.

• The goal is to push Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters, viewed by Ankara as terrorists, away from the Turkish border.

• Around 480km of Syria’s border with its southern neighbour, from the Euphrates river in the west to Iraq in the east, is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is largely made up of Kurdish fighters.

• Turkey says it wants to settle up to two million Syrian refugees in the safe zone. It currently hosts 3.6 million Syrians sheltering from the more than eight-year-old conflict in their homeland.

• Kurds argue that Ankara’s goal is to dilute their dominance in the region with an influx of mostly Sunni Arab refugees now living in southwestern Turkey.

• Turkey and the US have been negotiating the establishment of the safe zone for weeks but Ankara, believing the Pentagon was stalling, began preparing for a unilateral assault.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Mr Trump on Sunday to complain. Hours later the White House issued a statement saying Turkey would “soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into northern Syria” and US forces would “no longer be in the immediate area”.

WHAT ABOUT THE KURDS?

• Turkey considers YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against Turkey for 35 years and is designated a terrorist group by the US.

• The YPG militia have done most of the heavy lifting as part of a US-led coalition fighting against Islamic State. The US first began arming YPG in 2014 when Islamic State attacked the Kurdish town of Kobani, with support then extending to more weapons, training and air strikes.

• America’s support of YPG has been a source of constant tension with NATO ally Turkey.

• The Syrian civil war has given the Kurds the opportunity to establish a semi-autonomous region covering a large swath of the country’s northeast, but it’s feared the Turkish assault could plunge the relatively stable area into “permanent war”.

• The SDF fears a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria could lead to “ethnic cleansing” by Turkish forces, a resurgence of Islamic State, or a renewed onslaught by Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces.

The US has been accused of betraying its Kurdish allies. Picture: Delil Souleiman/AFP

WHAT DOES THE US WANT?

• Mr Trump is mainly concerned with the fate of thousands of captured Islamic State fighters and their families — he doesn’t want the US to be responsible for them.

• Around 2000 foreign-born fighters, many from European countries, are being held in detention facilities in northern Syria by the SDF. Another 10,000 Syrian and Iraqi fighters are being held there, while up to 58,000 family members are also living in special camps.

• The US President also sees his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East.

• After the pullback from the northern frontier it remains to be seen whether the US will withdraw all of its roughly 1000 troops from Syria.

• Last year, Mr Trump abruptly ordered a full withdrawal from Syria, prompting the resignation of Defence Secretary James Mattis. He subsequently reversed course and decided to keep some forces in Syria to prevent the return of Islamic State.

• After significant backlash to the announcement late Sunday night that the US would step aside ahead of a Turkish attack on the Kurds, Mr Trump threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy if it goes too far.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

• Turkey’s immediate military plans appear to be focused along a 100km section of the border between the towns of Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad.

• Around 50 to 100 US “special operators” were withdrawn from two observation posts in Tel Abyad and Ain Issa on Monday, where they had served as a buffer between the Turkish military and the SDF.

• While the area is under Kurdish control, it has a strong Arab presence. “It’s a region where the population is Arab and where Turkey has good ties with the leading groups,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli from the German Marshall Fund think tank told Reuters. “(If the YPG tries to hold territory there) it will lose a lot of blood.”

• Mr Erdogan has raised the prospect of pushing even further beyond the proposed safe zone to the cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor.

• Pentagon and State Department officials are holding out the possibility of persuading Turkey to abandon its expected invasion.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR ISIS?

• There are fears renewed fighting could give the vanquished terror group the opportunity to stage a revival.

• The SDF has previously warned it may not be able to hold the captured Islamic State fighters if its soldiers have to battle Turkish troops.

• If they escape or are released, the could reconstitute the Islamic State, less than one year after it was defeated and its “caliphate” disintegrated.

• Mr Trump declared that it would be the responsibility of Turkey and other countries to deal with the prisoners. “Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out, and what they want to do with the captured ISIS fighters in their ‘neighbourhood’,” he said.

• Turkey’s hard-line government has previously been accused of providing passive support to Islamic State, including by treating wounded militants for free at hospitals across southeastern Turkey.

Originally published as Why does Turkey want to invade Syria?