Turkey, the PKK, the YPG and the US: A Dangerous Gambit at Play

By Scott Morgan

The fallout or blowback from the failed effort to remove Turkish President Erdogan is still leaving impact more than six weeks later. As expected the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) has been the target of a campaign to restore order and in turn the group has reprised its campaign against Turkish Security Forces.

There was some surprise when Turkish Armor was sent in to participate in the Jarabulus Campaign (aka Operation Euphrates Shield). It was determined that this was an effort to seal off a potential escape route for ISIS Fighters attempting to escape from Raqqa. However the battle took on a more unique twist mere days after the campaign began.

The event that occurred was that the Turkish Army then began to clash with the YPG. This group is a Syrian Kurdish Militia that is one of the Anti-Assad groups that are currently being backed by the United States and other Western Governments. The fighting placed some interesting pressure on Washington, as two of its key allies in the War against ISIS were fighting each other.

There are several questions that beg to be asked. First off, is Turkey really an ally of the West in this Effort? That is a great question. The Turkish Intelligence Service has been acting like the ISI in Pakistan with one element financing and protecting ISIS on the one hand while another group and the Military sought to destroy it. The Erdogan regime has actually taken the necessary effort of restoring ties with Moscow. The problem is that relations with Moscow will be what analysts in Brussels, Jerusalem, Cairo and Washington will pay attention to and not some of the nefarious acts that have been committed already

But why would the Turks attack the YPG? There were reports from Turkish Media that the US Backed YPG, and that it had transferred American Manufactured Weapons to the PKK. For some time the Turkish Government has been silencing the Independent Media by quietly assimilating some outlets or by just outright seizing them. So there is some doubt when a Government has such a stranglehold on Media. It would have been nice to see any images of captured weapons to compare serial numbers against the list of those weapons provided by the CIA.
     
Syria and Iraq are both flooded with weapons and ISIS has used weapons captured from both the Syrian and Iraqi Military. It is possible that the YPG provided these weapons after they captured them.

Will the fighting between the Turkish Army and the YPG have any impact on US-Turkish Relations? It is a no-brainer that after the coup-attempt relations between the two have been strained. Operations at Incirlik were actually stopped as the Turks went on their hunt for coup plotters.

There are reports as well that after the clashes no Air Support came from the US Air Force. From a strategic standpoint the US is still smarting from the failure of the Coup Attempt and the cash payments to Iran.

(Image: Jarabulus Campaign- Google Images)

[The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dissecting Society]