James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, continues to seek to appease Turkish saber-rattling and appears ready to facilitate Turkish entrance into Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria.
This would be a terrible idea for several reasons:
- The Kurdish zone in Syria is the most stable and secure region in the country.
- The Kurds almost single-handedly defeated al Qaeda and then the Islamic State at a time when both received support from the Turkish intelligence service and members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s family, if not Erdoğan himself. Kurdish forces allied with the United States when Turkey sought to undermine the U.S. position.
- Turkish intelligence is deeply flawed and politicized.
- Turkey’s previous incursion into northern Syria ended in anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing.
Before President Trump and Jeffrey make any more concessions to Erdoğan and his imperial ambitions, it might be useful for them to consider whether Turkey’s stated grievances are real, or rather a tactic to extract concessions.
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