Syria's Kurdish forces resist Turkey's advances as Erdogan sees opportunity in political vacuum

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has essentially announced a full-scale campaign in Syria, the Kurdish forces have started launching counterattacks.

In Syria’s complex battlefield, Turkey has joined hands with Islamist groups to open a battle front against Kurds , the ethnic minority that runs an autonomous administration in the northeast called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

Even before Syrian opposition groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had ousted Bashar al-Assad, Turkish forces and one of its proxy militias inside Syria, the Syrian National Army (SNA), had mounted an offensive against Kurds in Aleppo's Manbij .

Since the attack in Manbij, the SNA has attacked Kurds at Kobani and HTS marched against Kurds at Deir Ezzor and took control of the town.

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As a full-scale Turkish invasion of Syria looks imminent , Erdogan on Monday (December 23) essentially announced a full-scale campaign against Kurds.

Erdogan said that Turkey will “remove” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the region. Turkey equates Syrian Kurds’ military, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the PKK and considers it an enemy force. Erdogan’s announcement is therefore essentially declaration of a military campaign against Syrian Kurds.

‘Kurds will undoubtedly be removed’

In a speech on Monday, Erdogan said that Kurdish PKK and what he calls its Syrian offshoots would “undoubtedly be removed” from the region.

“These murderous groups, which deny anyone the right to live or speak, will undoubtedly be removed as a source of threat to our region,” said Erdogan, according to Rudaw’s English service.

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Erdogan further said, “We are determined to continue our precise operations against separatist terrorist elements in Syria with surgical accuracy, ensuring not even a single civilian is harmed.”

The PKK has carried out an insurgency inside Turkey and Erdogan has long equated the group with Syrian Kurds. Over the years, he has repeatedly mounted offensives against Syrian Kurds with the intention to drive them as far away from Turkey’s border as possible. Turkey considers PKK a terrorist group in the region and treats the SDF as same.

Kurds fight back against Turkish proxies

Even though the SDF has been defending its positions against the Turkey-SNA-HTS combine for weeks, it now appears to have started proactive operations.

It appears that the SDF has launched counterattacks in at least two directions.

In the first instance, SDF Spokesperson Farhad Shami on Monday said on X that the Kurdish forces launched a counterattack at Tishreen Dam near Manbij, which is the city that was first attacked by Turks and SNA this month.

The SDF seized 10 bodies of “Turkish occupation mercenaries”, captured one fighter, and destroyed five military vehicles in the ongoing counterattack, said Shami.

Previously, the SDF on Saturday said it killed 52 SNA fighters in battles around Tishreen Dam.

In the second 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 16 soldiers were killed in battles with the SNA in these areas.

The Kurds and the SDF play a hugely strategic role in Syria. They are the primary US ally that keeps the Islamic State (IS) in check. As SDF is under attack from the Turkey-SNA-HTS combine , the counterterrorism mission has been compromised. As SDF also runs 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.

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”.