Turkey’s offensive against US-allied militias in the Afrin region of northern Syria is putting NATO in a difficult position. As tensions between the NATO allies escalate, analysts wonder how far Ankara is prepared to go.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller arrived in Ankara Monday on a long-planned visit that was unrelated to Turkey’s current military campaign against a Kurdish enclave in the northwest Syrian region of Afrin. But her trip provoked heightened interest, given that NATO’s two largest armies stand on opposite sides in the operation.
Ankara says it wants to clear the Syrian border enclave of Kurdish YPG fighters; it considers YPG units to be allies of the Kurdish insurgents that have fought against the Turkish state for decades. But the YPG has the backing of the United States, which sees the Kurdish militants as its main allies in Syria against the “Islamic State” (IS).
Gottemoeller was briefed by Turkish officials who assured her, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stated publicly, that the Afrin offensive would be “brief.” NATO officials in Brussels stressed Monday that Gottemoeller was not in Ankara because of the heightened tensions between Turkey and the US, nor would she be playing any kind of mediation role in the dispute.
The NATO deputy chief made no mention of the issue consuming Turkish media in her sole tweet about her Monday engagements in Ankara, which showed her at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
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