As Erdogan vows to 'bury' Kurds in Syria, they launch counterattacks against Turkey-backed militias

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that Kurdish fighters in Syria face two choices: surrender or death.

In the cover of the opposition forces’ push against the Assad dynasty, Turkey late last month opened a front against Kurds in Syria , an ethnic minority that runs an autonomous region called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in the country’s northeast.

Turkey equates Syrian Kurds’ People’s Defense Units (YPG), the mainstay of AANES’ military wing Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency inside Turkey for decades and has been designated as a terrorist organisation. As Turkey equates YPG and SDF with the PKK, it has essentially launched a full-scale campaign against them which involves Turkish military and Turkey-backed groups in Syria.

As Turkey-led attacks show no sign of ending, Kurdish forces have also started launching counterattacks in multiple theatres in Syria.

As the Kurds once saw their region once ravaged by the Islamic State, there are concerns that the new alliance waging a war against them comprising Turkey, Turkey-backed militias like the Syrian National Army (SNA), and Syria’s new rulers Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), could lead to another round of ethnic cleansing in the country and revive the Islamist violence that they spent years suppressing.

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Surrender or die, Erdogan tells Syrian Kurds

In a speech to his party in the parliament, Erdogan on Wednesday (December 25) said that Kurds in Syria could either surrender or “be buried”.

“The separatist murderers will either bid farewell to their weapons or they will be buried in Syrian lands along with their weapons. We will eradicate the terrorist organisation that is trying to weave a wall of blood between us and our Kurdish siblings,” said Erdogan.

Earlier this week, Erdogan had said that Turkey would “remove” the PKK from the region .

Together, these comments essentially amount to the declaration that Turkey is running a full-scale campaign against Kurds in Syria.

Erdogan went on to say that PKK and what he called PKK’s Syrian offshoots would “undoubtedly be removed” from the region.

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Erdogan said, “These murderous groups, which deny anyone the right to live or speak, will undoubtedly be removed as a source of threat to our region."

Syrian Kurds fight back on multiple fronts

As Erdogan has launched a full-scale campaign against Kurds, the Kurdish SDF has also started to fight back on multiple fronts.

The Turkish offensive against Kurds is primarily driven by SNA on the ground with aerial support by warplanes and drones from regular Turkish military.

The most intensive fighting has been around the town of Manbij in Aleppo province that the SNA captured as the HTS-led opposition groups were on their march to Damascus late last month. Since the capture of Manbij, the SNA has attacked Kurds at Kobani and HTS has captured the town of Deir Ezzor from Kurds.

In recent days, the Turkish-backed groups have also launched attacks against Kurds near Raqqa, which SDF Spokesperson Farhad Shami said had been repelled.

Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a journalist and author with expertise on Kurds and West Asia, told Al Arabiya that while the SDF has not entered Manbij, it has made territorial gains in the vicinity of the town. The assertion has been confirmed by the SDF as well.

Shami said on X on Wednesday that the SDF continued to successfully engage Turkish-backed groups in the region.

“Our forces successfully thwarted the attacks of Turkish occupation mercenaries on villages south of the Tishreen Dam, eliminating and wounding many mercenaries, forcing them to flee,” said Shami.

Sharing details not made public previously, Shami said that SDF in the vicinity of Abu Qalqal, southeast of Manbij, “effectively countered the attacks of the Turkish occupation mercenaries” and “destroyed several military vehicles belonging to the mercenaries and eliminated many of them”.

Shami said “intense clashes” continue in the region.

Shami said that the SDF was not just fighting SNA but was under attack from regular Turkish military as well. He said that Turkey had “launched a barrage of heavy artillery fire upon areas surrounding the Tishreen Dam and the axes of engagement” along with drones that caused “significant damage” to the dam.

Previously, Shami said on Monday that the Kurdish forces launched a counterattack at Tishreen Dam near Manbij. He said that the SDF seized 10 bodies of “Turkish occupation mercenaries”, captured one fighter, and destroyed five military vehicles. Last week, the SDF over the weekend said it killed 52 SNA fighters in battles around Tishreen Dam.

In the second such instance, the SDF said it launched a counterattack against advancing SNA forces in Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor provinces, according to Rudaw.

The outlet quoted SDF as saying that it lost 16 soldiers in fighting with the SNA in these areas.

In the third case, Kurdish forces also “successfully foiled an infiltration attempt by the Turkish occupation mercenaries” on the village of um al-Baramil, east of Ain Issa, according to Shami.

Speaking to Al Arabiya, van Wilgenburg said that the SDF has made territorial gains in recent days, partly due to the weather that disallowed Turkey to provide substantial aerial support to SNA and others on the ground, allowing SDF to hit them hard. He said that the SDF has recaptured “some villages” close to Tishreen Dam near Manbij.

Why do Kurds matter in Syria?

The Kurds are the main US ally in Syria and mainstay in the counterterrorism operations against Islamic State (IS) and others in the region.

As the SDF is under attack from the Turkey-SNA-HTS combine, its counterterrorism mission has been compromised.

Moreover, the SDF runs several prisons housing as many as 40,000 Islamic State terrorists and their families. There are fears that there might be attempts to storm these prisons by utilising the Turkey-induced chaos.

The Kurds are also concerned that, under conditions created by Turkey’s actions, various factions of Islamists might come together and the community may face ethnic cleansing — just like Nagorno-Karabakh faced at the hands of Turkey-backed Azerbaijan.

Earlier this month, SDF chief General Mazloum Abdi told Fox News that he expected “those Islamists, different factions to unite , to fight with ISIS and that will bring back tougher extremists, terrorist organisations back to the country”.

Separately, Fox Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin quoted a Kurdish source as saying the community fears an ethnic cleansing may be in the offing amid Turkey’s campaign against them.

“The Turks have begun moving toward Kobani. We need to stop this as quickly as possible. This is extremely dangerous and threatens the existence of the Kurds in Syria. Ethnic Cleansing ongoing and Civil War alarm bells start to ring,” the source told Griffin.