By Lan Shunzheng
Recently, the armed forces of Turkey and the US conducted the first joint ground patrol in the safe zone in northeastern Syria, involving four Turkish and American helicopters, announced the Turkish Defense Ministry. The joint patrol marked a rapprochement between Turkey and the United States. However, actually it’s a more symbolic than substantive move and won’t contribute much to improving their bilateral ties. Turkish president Erdogan said on the very day of the joint patrol that negotiations between Turkey and the US were still in the process of building a safe zone from the Iraqi border to the east of Euphrates, but divergences remained. He accused Washington of seeking to establish a safe zone beneficial for “terrorist organizations”, which referred to Kurdish People’s Protection Units that was listed by Turkey as a terrorist organization. “We have disagreements with the US every step of the way. We want to eradicate terrorist organization from that zone completely, but the US wants to deal with us and the terrorist organization at the same time, trying to get us to co-exist in the same area,” added Erdogan.
The statement distinctly showed Ankara’s dissatisfaction with what Washington did. The Turkey-US relationship has met some bumps recently. Washington adopted various measures to pressure Turkey not to buy S-400 from Russia but none of them worked. The Russia-made air defense system is now installed in Turkey.
In addition to making full use of its geographical advantage in the Middle East, its important position in NATO and its close ties with Russia and Iran, Turkey has another “card” in hand to deal with the US, namely the Kurds. The Kurdish armed forces in Syria have quickly grown with US support, and as the situation there is getting out of control, Washington wants them to take a secure footing in Syria and help maintain its influence there. However, the rising Kurdish forces have made Ankara worried, who, to curb this momentum, has launched the “Euphrates Shield” and “Olive Branch” military operations against them. As the Turkey-US relation worsens, Ankara is imposing pressure on the US by taking the Kurds as hostages.
Facing an aggressive Ankara, Washington had to make a compromise in order to secure the Kurds without offending Turkey. On August 7, the two sides reached an agreement on setting up a safe zone in northeast Syria and decided to carry out joint patrol and arrange a buffer zone, to “separate” the Turkish border from the Kurd-controlled zone in Syria and ease Ankara’s concerns. But the problem is that Washington hasn’t taken any concrete step yet, which seriously dissatisfied Ankara, and Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that Turkey won’t tolerate any “procrastination” by the US on the safe zone issue.
Even though they’ve already begun to take joint control, Ankara still believed Washington was just going through the motions. As Erdogan stressed, to establish a safe zone, they need more than just superficial measures such as sending three to five helicopters, conducting five to ten patrols or deploying several hundred soldiers in the local area, which were not enough to achieve the goal.
Ankara also put other “chips” on the table to warn Washington not to play any “touch ball”. On one hand, Erdogan said Turkey will implement its own plan if the safe zone isn’t established by the end of September; on the other hand, he suggested that Turkey may adopt an attitude more in favor of America’s rivals both over the Idlib issue and at the summit of Turkish, Russian and Iranian leaders to be held this month.
Furthermore, Erdogan recently stated in public that “some country doesn’t allow Turkey to have nuclear weapons. I cannot accept that.” This not only caused the international community to worry about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, but also dropped a bomb with America’s close ally Israel, and the pressure will eventually be transmitted to America, either directly, or indirectly.
