The threat of an offensive in northern Syria, agitated since May by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has not yet materialized. His plan to extend the “safe area”deep of 30 kilometers, which the Turkish army and its Syrian auxiliaries have conquered since 2016, comes up against the reluctance of the United States and Russia. It was then a question of driving out the Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls the Syrian Northeast. In the meantime, Turkey is waging a war of attrition against the Kurdish militia, which it considers a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Not a day goes by without bombardments and drone attacks against Kurdish fighters, which also cause many civilian casualties. From the city of Kobané, which Kurdish forces took over from the Islamic State (IS) organization in 2015 with the support of the international coalition led by Washington, to Kamechliyé, no area is spared. According to the latest count from the Airwars collective, which only lists civilian casualties, there have been at least 54 attacks that have killed nearly 120 people since the start of the year.
Kurdish fighters live under the threat of Turkish drones. The Rojava Information Center, based in Kamechliyé, has listed at least 68 drone attacks since the beginning of the year, which would have left at least 41 dead and 77 injured. “Over the past year, Turkey has expanded its drone campaign into northeastern Syria and northern Iraq. Many within the Kurdish forces consider this to be a tacit agreement between Turkey and the United States, as an alternative to Turkey’s pursuit of a ground offensive.says Dareen Khalifa, of the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.
“They feel infiltrated”
Several Turkish executives of the PKK, but also Syrian executives of the YPG, close to the Turkish separatist party, were killed in Syria and Iraq. The Americans only protested the assassination, in a drone attack, on July 22, in the province of Hassakeh, of Salwa Yusuk, an assistant to the commander of the SDF Mazloum Abdi. “Drone attacks have become a tactic to fight the YPG. Turkey is telling them that, as long as the military operation is not an option, it has other means of targeting them”, says Oytun Orhan, a researcher at the Orsam Center for Middle East Studies, based in Turkey. These attacks, which give rise to reprisals even in Turkish territory, destabilize the Kurdish leaders. “They feel exposed and infiltrated. Turkey must have informants on the ground, which creates distrust”believes M.me Khalifa.
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