By Yaroslav Trofimov
ISTANBUL -- President Trump's abrupt decision to withdraw U.S.
troops from east Syria, transferring the region to Turkish military
control, goes beyond the wildest expectations of Turkey's President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For Mr. Erdogan, this may also turn into an example of the need
to be careful what you wish for.
Turkey, which was angling to seize from U.S.-backed Syrian
Kurdish forces a much more modest swath of land along its southern
frontier, could now become the pivotal power in Syria, establishing
a protectorate over a vast and oil-rich territory.
Already, Mr. Erdogan is seeing his ambitions for regional
leadership validated by the White House, as Turkey turns from the
target of frequent American criticism (and even economic sanctions)
to an indispensable partner in Syria and beyond. Mr. Trump even
accepted an invitation from Mr. Erdogan to visit Turkey in
2019.
"It will be a game-changer for the region if the U.S. and Turkey
were to start working as partners with each other," said Hassan
Hassan, a Syria specialist at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East
Policy in Washington. "If the U.S. wants to do something about
Iran, it needs a partner in the Middle East -- and this partner is
Turkey, not Saudi Arabia."
Turkey, with NATO's second-largest army and sophisticated
diplomatic and intelligence services, certainly has more ability to
project power than Mr. Trump's initial ally of choice in the Middle
East, Saudi Arabia. That's especially so after the Saudi monarchy's
image in Washington, and the region, was stained by the kingdom's
assassination of dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi, the affair that
could still spur Congressional punishment of Riyadh.
Yet, the Syria expansion also takes Turkey into a period of new,
and to a large extent unpredictable, risks just as its economy
starts to emerge from a currency crisis earlier this year. In
addition to confronting the Kurds, Turkey will also likely have to
contend with Syria's Sunni Arab areas where sympathies for Islamic
State extremists still linger.
"If the U.S. is fully withdrawing and Turkey is asked to take
over all these areas, it will be too much. Even the U.S. could not
do it all by itself -- there will need to be local forces
supporting the Turkish military, and other actors will have to be
standing by Turkey," said independent Turkish lawmaker Ozturk
Yilmaz, the country's former consul-general in Mosul who was held
hostage by Islamic State in 2014.
In fact, Turkey may end up cutting a deal with Russia and the
Syrian regime to take over only part of the territory that the U.S.
will vacate -- and leaving alone the most troublesome zones, such
as Raqqa and lands further south. Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday he will
soon be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss how to
confront the consequences of Mr. Trump's decision.
"It is certainly more than the Turkish side had hoped for," said
Ahmet Kasim Han, a professor at Altinbas University in Istanbul.
"But it still remains a Turkish prerogative how deep its operation
should go, and how long for."
Mr. Trump, for his part, has tweeted that Mr. Erdogan promised
him "to eradicate whatever is left" of Islamic State in Syria -- an
expectation that Turkey, rather that Iran or Russia, would be
responsible for eliminating the militant group's remnants.
There are many potential pitfalls that could scuttle Turkey's
Syria ambitions and undermine the unfolding realignment of
America's Middle East policy. The biggest unknown is what the YPG
Syrian Kurdish forces who currently control eastern Syria -- and
who would prefer virtually anyone but the Turks to replace American
troops -- will do in coming weeks.
Turkey views YPG as an existential foe because it is affiliated
with the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party -- a movement that has
waged a secessionist war in eastern Turkey for decades, and that is
classified as terrorist by Ankara and Washington alike. Mr. Erdogan
has been sending more troops and tanks to its border with Syria
along Kurdish-held areas in recent days.
The American withdrawal doesn't automatically open the path to a
Turkish invasion into Syria's Kurdish enclave, cautioned Ertugrul
Kurkcu, a former Turkish lawmaker and honorary chairman of HDP, the
pro-Kurdish party in Turkey's parliament. Following Mr. Trump's
decision, Russia, Iran and the Syrian regime have become "the new
interlocutors for the Kurds to negotiate their and Syria's future,"
he said, as the Kurds seek "to protect their political and social
gains in the east of Euphrates."
U.S. troops have forged close bonds with these Kurdish fighters
in the common fight against Islamic State since 2014, and have come
to view YPG fighters as allies and comrades-in-arms. That was one
reason why Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the presidential envoy
on fighting Islamic State, Brett McGurk, resigned in protest
against Mr. Trump's pullout decision.
The flip side of that shift is a dramatic improvement in
America's ties with Turkey.
"The U.S. withdrawal is eliminating the most egregious irritant
in bilateral relations -- U.S. support for YPG," said Sinan Ulgen,
a former Turkish diplomat and head of the Edam think tank in
Istanbul. "This will vastly improve relations and defuse the
prevailing anti-American rhetoric in Turkey."
In another perhaps unintended consequence, the planned
withdrawal could also torpedo Turkey's rapprochement with Russia
and Iran that began, in part, as Ankara's response to the cold
shoulder it was receiving from the Obama administration and, until
recently, Mr. Trump.
"Turkey's cooperation with Iran and Russia is a matter of
convenience," said Yasar Yakis, who served as one of Mr. Erdogan's
foreign ministers. "And their interests in Syria overlap only
occasionally."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 25, 2018 15:58 ET (20:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.