Ankara Hardens Its Stance as SDF and Israel Challenge Syria Policy

Tension over Syria is rising in Ankara on two interconnected levels. One is the military pressure Israel is exerting on the Ahmed al-Shara administration and on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The other is the SDF’s reluctance to take responsibility for the disarmament process—acting as if it has no connection whatsoever with the PKK—while keeping an eye on Israeli support, thereby disrupting the “Terror-Free Türkiye” process. This situation is now testing Ankara’s “red lines,” which can no longer be summarized in just one item but in two:

1. Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must not be undermined.

2. No security threat must emanate from Syria toward Türkiye.

In fact—as I will elaborate shortly—the strain on these two conditions is leading to increased activity within Türkiye’s three institutions involved in the process and to a hardening of messages.

Rising Tension, Hardening Messages

1. The coordination of the process is under the responsibility of MIT Director İbrahim Kalın. As the process has progressed, the messages coming from PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan have begun to diverge from the statements made by DEM. While Öcalan claims to be persuading the SDF, there is suspicion that, through his deliberately ambiguous language, he is in fact trying to rein the SDF in. The role of PKK member Veysi Aktaş, who was released from İmralı, has drawn attention in this process. In this context, MHP’s Feti Yıldız using the same wording as the AK Party leadership—saying “It won’t work unless all elements lay down their arms”—right before the visit by DEM Party’s İmralı delegation (Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar, together with Öcalan’s lawyer Faik Özgür Erol) to Devlet Bahçeli on December 13 should be read as a move to leave no room for ambiguity.

2. On the same day, December 12, National Defense Minister Yaşar Güler, while defending the 2026 budget in parliament, raised the emphasis a notch higher by saying “We will not allow it.” This should be read within the same framework. The Turkish Armed Forces increasing their activity in northern Syria last week in coordination with the Damascus administration, and Chief of General Staff Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu’s visit to Damascus, may be interpreted by the PKK as “They can’t do anything; Israel will apply pressure, the U.S. will block it,” but relying on this assumption could be misleading.

3. Also on December 12, the remarks made by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in his interview with Al Jazeera both increased the tone and directly targeted the Israel–SDF connection—now in a way that gives the impression of being based on specific intelligence:

   • “There is a relationship, a correlation, between Israel’s activity in Syria and the SDF’s reluctance. This now needs to be said. This is not a decision taken by the YPG alone. On the day Israel reaches a certain agreement framework with Syria, you will also see the future of the YPG.”

Having said a few days earlier that there cannot be two armies in one country, yet opening a door to compromise by stating that if they reach an agreement with Damascus the police force could come from the SDF, Fidan also emphasized in the Al Jazeera interview that Türkiye  would not allow the opposite scenario.

What Will the Commission Report Say?

Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş announced that draft reports have begun to arrive at the TBMM’s Commission on National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy.

DEM Party members we spoke with last night at a TÜSİAD cocktail reception in Ankara appear hopeful that the commission report could reach the General Assembly before the end of the year, despite the ongoing budget talks. Even if it does not make it by year’s end, there is the possibility of extending the time frame by two months at a time.

However, the longer the process drags on, the more tension grows within President Tayyip Erdoğan and his team. One of the main reasons for this is clearly the Türkiye–Israel tension.

The SDF and the Difference in Red Lines

It should also be noted that Ankara’s red line regarding the SDF—summarized as preserving Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and ensuring that it poses no threat to Türkiye—differs from the maximalist stance taken on Iraq in the early 2000s.

At that time, without taking into account the federative structure already present in Iraq’s history, an autonomous Kurdish entity was declared a red line. Yet with the 2007 Iraqi Constitution, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq was established. Today, it is addressed alongside the Iraqi central government.

The Syrian red line—or red lines—are, in one respect, stricter, and in another, more flexible.

For example, doors are being kept open to accepting, under an agreement with Damascus, a police force and a “federation without the name federation,” as well as to engaging with the SDF provided it purges and sends away non-Syrian armed elements within its ranks.

When one gets to the root of the tension in Ankara, it becomes apparent that there is an assessment that the Netanyahu administration in Israel and U.S. policy circles influenced by the Israeli lobby are trying to prevent Türkiye from finding a political solution to the Kurdish issue under its own parliamentary roof by disarming the PKK.