Today, Syria is 'a Rubik's cube of battle fronts'

The World
Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters take up positions inside a damaged building in al-Vilat al-Homor neighborhood in Hasaka city, as they monitor the movements of Islamic State fighters who are stationed in Ghwayran neighborhood in Hasaka cit

The Kurds in Syria have played an important role in weakening ISIS.

New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi witnessed this firsthand, while visiting norther Syria recently. But, she says, while the Kurds have been instrumental in fighting ISIS, the Turkish government is "very queasy and nervous" about them. It views the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) as a terrorist group.

"Turkey sees the Kurds, and specifically the PKK, as an existential threat," she says.

The amount of land that they have been able to bring under their control in Syria worries Ankara.

"It's an area that's now roughly three times the size of Lebanon, a third of which they have been able to seize back from ISIS and the Assad regime in the past three months," she says.

The Turkish government has been increasing its pressure on the Kurds and, in retaliation, the Kurds have stepped up attacks on Turkish targets. A series of attacks this past weekend shocked Turkey. There are suspicions the Kurdish PKK was behind at least two of them.

In an interview with the BBC, Cemil Bayik, the man leading the PKK said he thinks Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants ISIS to succeed to prevent Kurdish gains.

“The Turkish claim they are fighting Islamic State ... but in fact they are fighting the PKK,” he said.

Meanwhile, Callimachi says the US is watching all this with unease. She says all this makes the fighting in Syria even more complicated.

"It's almost like this Rubik's cube of battle fronts, with new ones opening every few months," she says.

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