Attacking Kurds Trumps Toppling Assad

Abstract

Chapter Five focuses on the implications of the change in Erdoğan’s domestic plans for his Syria policy. The chapter zooms in on how Erdoğan’s nationalist turn led to a shift in his priorities, from ousting the regime to curbing Kurdish advances in northern Syria. It shows that Erdoğan ended up empowering the very regime he desperately sought to overthrow, in order to obtain Assad’s acquiescence to Turkey’s military incursions that aimed to check Kurdish advances. It argues that after years of arming the anti-Assad opposition, Erdoğan dealt one of the biggest blows to that same opposition so that he could extend his newly launched war against Turkey’s Kurds into Syria.