As the world becomes increasingly more focused on the second coronavirus wave and the American elections, Erdoğan’s mercenaries and army will most likely invade Northern Syria again in the coming days and weeks.
Erdoğan knows that no regional or global power will seriously challenge him if he occupies the rest of Northern Syria, also known as Rojava. During the last four years, he has seized every opportunity to execute his neo-Ottoman enterprise. He has openly recruited jihadis and occupied three strategic areas in Rojava. As the Syrian Kurds remain the most stubborn obstacle to his regional expansion southward, he has made his intentions to eliminate the semiautonomous administration in Northern Syria abundantly clear.
The Trump administration has little concern for the situation in Syria. Dismissing the Pentagon officials’ strong advice, Trump has given in to Erdoğan’s demands in Northern Syria more than once. Erdoğan secured Trump’s implicit approval to attack the Syrian Kurds about a year ago, during a dubious phone call between the two leaders. Given that things might change under a Biden administration, it is safe to assume that the opportunistic Erdoğan has already planned a devastating strike to knock out this secular, semiautonomous, multiethnic entity in Rojava.
Knowing that during the coming few weeks it is highly unlikely that the U.S. administration will risk a serious confrontation with Turkey, Erdoğan has very little to worry about should he decide to send his jihadi mercenaries into the rest of Rojava. The European leaders are careful not to criticize him, as he continues to blackmail them with the threat of “flooding” Europe with refugees. Also, the easing of the aggression against Greece and Cyprus should not be interpreted as a forgetting of the European solidarity with the Greeks. He is merely coordinating other expansionist moves, and his rage against Europe has only increased.
Unlike 100 years ago, today it is the Turkish leadership that sees Europe as the dying “sick man.” Also, contrary to when the Ottoman Empire was on its deathbed and the czar invited European ambassadors to make “arrangements,” today Russia is making arrangements with Turkey for Europe’s funeral.
Putin and Erdoğan have gotten into the habit of making deals in the old imperial style, whereby emperors call the significant shots in international relations. In the nineteenth century, two emperors would meet in a luxurious resort to exchange some territories, along with entire populations, in a matter of hours, after which they might enjoy the rest of their day hunting geese, for example, and, of course, exchanging more personal compliments over an imperial meal. Whether in Syria, Libya, or perhaps even Caucasia, Putin and Erdoğan have found each other to be reliable partners, passing each other swift personal deals while other political leaders are overwhelmed with endless crises—democratic and nondemocratic, parliamentarian and anti-parliamentarian, regional and global, political and economic, and many more.
In January 2018, Putin ordered his soldiers to step aside, allowing Erdoğan’s jihadis and army to take over Afrin after Erdoğan had withdrawn his army units and mercenaries from Aleppo. Similarly, Al-Hasakah is Erdoğan’s prize for giving up Idlib to the Syrian army, Russia’s ally. In addition to the oil fields, Al-Hasakah entails a uniquely valuable prize that may prove essential for Erdoğan’s future expansionist plans: ISIS prisoners and their families in Al-Hawl camp, which has been under the Syrian Democratic Forces’ control, are, for Erdoğan, the human (jihadi) resources needed to boost his mercenaries—now and in the long run. Put simply, for Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman plans, the children and men of Al-Hawl camp are the most sizable population of jihadis, the equivalent of old Ottoman janissaries. With these new recruits at his disposal, Erdoğan will soon turn toward Europe to take his long due revenge, fueled by both recent and old dreams of sultanism.
Who else could possibly stand in Erdoğan’s way of finally swallowing his Rojava prize? The Iranian regime is already forced into a defensive position, especially now that the Iranian border with Azerbaijan is at the mercy of the Turkish-backed Azerbaijanis who have a substantial demographic extension inside Iran. The Iranian regime is afraid that Erdoğan’s pan-Turkic alliance might have a stronger appeal than Shia Islamism and Iranian patriotism among Turkic minorities inside Iran.
Soon, the world, from China to Spain and beyond, will realize that Yezidis, Syrian Kurds, and leftist Turks were not the last but rather the first victims of neo-Ottoman imperialism. This imperialist monstrosity devours the locally and regionally most defenseless and prepares to do the same to the next in line in order of strength. Contrary to what the adherents of “clash of civilizations” like to believe, the rise of neo-Ottoman Islamism is an international challenge and will not be defeated without international solidarity first and foremost with those who have been fighting it in the Middle East, such as those in Rojava and the mountains of Kurdistan.
The fascism that is starting to mobilize against the French Republic is the exact same one that has been fought by liberation movements from Baluchistan to Darfur and resisted on the streets of Tehran, Baghdad, and Istanbul. Today the main anti-Islamist frontiers are still in the Middle East and North Africa, but that is changing very quickly.
The culturalizing ideologies that depict the world in terms of false dichotomies—such as East vs. West or Muslim vs. Christian—along with the prevailing political indifference toward the marginalized will only expedite the rise of various forms of fascism across the world, including Islamism that is led by Erdoğan and Khamenei. If things continue this way, at some point in the future, some historians might refer to today’s Rojava as the first tragically lost war that marks the beginning of a new dark era.
Saladdin Ahmed is the author of Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura (SUNY Press, 2019). He is currently a visiting assistant professor of political theory at Union College.
