Jean Marcou, Professor of Law at Sciences Po Grenoble, researcher at CERDAP2 and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.
On November 13, 2022, while in Paris, the victims of the attacks that took place on the same day in 2015 were being commemorated, Istanbul was hit by a bomb attack in one of its emblematic emblematic district. That day, on Istiklal Caddesi (the Avenue of mid-afternoon, at a time when this interminable pedestrian thoroughfare crowded pedestrian thoroughfare, the explosion of a bomb placed on a bench on a bench killed six people (including two children), and more than more than 80 injured. This tragedy was felt with all the more anguish by Stamboulians as in March 2016, Istiklal Caddesi had already been the scene of a comparable attack, and that in that previous year, Turkey (like France at the same time) had been one of the most was one of the countries most affected by a wave of spectacular attacks, mostly most often sponsored by Daech.
Blaming of the PKK and reprisals
The Turkish authorities almost immediately accused the PKK, or more precisely its Syrian branch and its multiple structures (PYD-YPG), of being behind the deadly explosion. Barely ten hours later, they arrested a young Syrian woman, Ahlam Albashir, and several others, who confessed to having been recruited and paid to carry out the attack. For its part, the Kurdish organization in question denied any involvement, and accused the Turkish government of having "obscure plans" in the matter. Since then, five other people suspected of helping the perpetrators of theIstiklal Caddesi attack have also been arrested in Bulgaria. And while Turkey is seeking their extradition, on the night of November 19-20 it carried out a series of air strikes on 89 targets held by the PYD-YPG and its allies (in particular the Syrian Democratic Forces), in northern Syria and Iraq.
The Turkish Ministry of Defense operation, dubbed " PençeKılıçHareketi " (the claw-glaive offensive) in retaliation, stating in part: "The time of reckoning has come. bastards will have to pay for their perfidious attacks". attacks". Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part, announced that these strikes were just the beginning. Whatever the of the operations in Syria and Iraq, as well as those of the of the investigation still underway, it is important to remember that these events in a particularly complex context, with both international and domestic implications. international and domestic implications.
The revival of Turkey's plans for a new military intervention in Syria
Since 2016, Turkey has carried out three ground offensives indirectly or directly against Kurdish militias in northern Syria. Since 2019, moreover, it has been conducting air strikes and ongoing cross-border military incursions in Iraq against the PKK, which moves between its rear base in the Qandil mountains in the far northeast of that country and the latter's border with Syria to the west. In Syria, these military operations have enabled the Turkish army to gain control of an almost continuous border buffer strip. The only exception to this continuum is the eastern bank of the Euphrates and the town of Kobane, which Ankara has identified in its communiqués as the place from which "the orders" to carry out the attack originated. It is in this Kurdish border area, which is beyond its control in Syria, that Turkey has been aspiring to carry out a new military operation for several months.
As part of the ongoing project which, since 2016, has motivated Turkey to halt the development of an autonomous autonomous Kurdish zone in Syria, this objective also has more recent recent explanations. It was last June, in fact, that the idea of this offensive was revived the war in Ukraine, and in the context of the Swedish and Finnish Swedish and Finnish applications to join NATO. When, in June and July he began to play a part in encouraging negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, leading to the July 22, 2022 agreement to resume Ukrainian grain exports via a secure Black Sea corridor, the Turkish government is also trying to get the Russians to accept in return the idea of a new intervention by its army in Syria against the Kurdish militias (YPG).
The revival of this military intervention military intervention is motivated by Turkey's objections to Stockholm and Helsinki's Helsinki's application to join NATO, on the grounds that the Swedes and Finns give sanctuary to Kurdish opponents whom Ankara regards as linked to the PKK to the PKK and therefore terrorists. Turkish military involvement in Syria against against the Syrian branch of the PKK would be a timely reminder that Turkey that Turkey, in the grip of terrorists, can legitimately be concerned about the entry into NATO of countries that give them sanctuary. However, during the the negotiations on the cereals agreement, and the many contacts he had with with Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan only managed to obtain polite declarations from Russia acknowledging its right to right to preserve his country's security.
The hostility of most of the region's players to a new Turkish intervention on the ground soil
The November 13 attack therefore seems to have created the conditions for a Turkish intervention. But it is important to note that, for the moment, we're only talking about air strikes, i.e. developments that are much more circumscribed than previous previous operations, which involved major ground troop deployments. ground troops. It is true that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has presented these events as the first phase of an inevitable large-scale intervention. This operation, however the support of all those involved in the area. On November 22, Alexander Lavrentyev, one of the Kremlin's senior diplomats on a trip to Kazakhstan in Kazakhstan, the Kremlin called on Turkey to exercise restraint "to prevent tensions both in the north and northeast of Syria, and throughout its territory".
On the same day, several representatives of Biden administration, reiterated the United States' hostility to a new Turkish military operation and called for de-escalation. For his part, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his plans for intervention attacking (but not formally naming) the United States and the links their special forces (still present in the region, numbering some 900 men) with Kurdish militias. In addition, on November 22, despite the latest warnings, a Turkish drone struck a Syrian Democratic Forces command post a Syrian Democratic Forces command post, close to an American Special Forces in northern Syria. Turkey's defiant stance towards the United States the United States confirms an attitude that was already very hostile in the wake of the attack, which saw Ankara refuse condolences from Washington's condolences. For Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cannot count on support from Russia, as we have seen, and even less from Iran, which is Iran, long opposed to any intervention by the Turkish army in Syria. in Syria.
A pre-election climate to keep in mind
In any case, with seven months to go before the next general elections, this initiative gives Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his political backers (notably the ultra-nationalist MHP party) the opportunity to test the reaction of Turkish public opinion on a security theme. For, to appreciate these developments, one cannot ignore the pre-election climate of tension that currently tends to permeate the entire Turkish political scene. In 2015, after losing its absolute majority in the June parliamentary elections, the AKP managed to regain its supremacy in parliament in November, following an early election and several weeks of campaigning, conducted against a backdrop of repeated attacks and clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish guerrillas in the south-east of the country.
At a time when the ruling party is struggling in the polls and facing an unprecedented economic crisis as a result of galloping inflation and the steep depreciation of the national currency, the temptation to arouse a security reflex in the electorate is great. But the conduct of a military operation in Syria could lead Turkey to isolate itself once again, at a time when it is working to re-engage with major players in the region and mediate in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.