Amid the euphoria following the toppling of the Assad regime in Damascus, the situation facing Syria’s non-Arab and non-Sunni Muslim minorities has been largely ignored. But even as the global media focuses on Damascus and speculates regarding the future intentions of the new power brokers, in another part of Syria the war is not over, and clashes are ongoing.
The area in question is Syria’s northeast, and the combatant sides are the US-aligned, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and the Turkish-supported Sunni Islamist Syrian National Army (SNA).
To understand the nature and dynamic of the conflict now under way in northern Syria between these two organizations, a number of broader dynamics must first be addressed.
Most notably, and perhaps insufficiently understood, is that the ending of 61 years of Ba’ath party rule in Syria is, above all, the triumph of one man. That man is not Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani, though he is set to emerge as Syria’s new president. The man in question is Turkish President Recep Tayepp Erdogan.
Erdogan’s decision to refuse to cede a small corner of northwest Syria to the Assad regime enabled the slow growth of the forces that would eventually destroy Assad. For half a decade, this decision appeared inexplicable. Everyone else had long moved on from the Syrian civil war, assuming it was over.
The Russians, sometimes shrewd and patient strategists, on this occasion, walked into a Turkish trap, taking their Syrian client regime along with them. In their strategy of “reconciliation”’ rather than outright conquest of Syrian rebel-held areas, they got around the problem of the most hard-core, determined insurgents by including an element in reconciliation agreements that allowed these men to keep their weapons and make their way to the Turkish-guaranteed enclave in the northwest of the country.
The idea, presumably, was that these men would then spend their time praying and training, in total irrelevance. Instead, as it turns out, with this practice Russia and the Assad regime busily stoked the fires that would eventually consume them.
But it should be remembered that in their northwest Syrian enclave, the Turks allowed the incubation of not one, but two Sunni Islamist armies and authorities. The first of these, HTS and its Syrian Salvation Government is the force that marched to Damascus and took power there in December 2024.
Syrian National Army
THE SECOND group, the Syrian National Army (SNA) and its Syrian Interim Government, is a more direct creation of Ankara. It consists of north Syrian Sunni insurgent Islamist groups other than HTS, corralled by Turkey into a military force trained, armed, and directed by Ankara.
It is far less disciplined than HTS, with a track record in violence against Syrians belonging to non-Arab or non-Sunni minorities, such as the murder of prominent politician Hevrin Khalaf in 2019. This force, supported by the Turkish army, carried out the ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Syrian Kurds from the Afrin area in 2018.
The SNA has maintained a prison system in northwest Syria, in which torture and abuse are routine, and into which thousands of Syrians have disappeared.
Parallel to HTS’s drive on Damascus, the SNA launched its own offensive in
November 2024. The SNA was directed not southward, against the regime, but rather eastward, against the Syrian Kurds. With close Turkish support, the SNA overran Tal Rifaat and then took Manbij, pushing the SDF back to the Euphrates River line. Their advance included, unsurprisingly, documented war crimes, including the filmed executions of two wounded soldiers in a hospital in Manbij.
The United States brokered a ceasefire along the river line but shelling has continued. The latest reports suggest that the SDF has now launched a counteroffensive in the direction of Manbij.
All indications suggest that the Turkish plan for Syria, now controlled by its clients, includes the destruction of the SDF, and of the political authority it defends, the Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria. As of now, there are indications that a major new offensive by the SNA, supported by the Turkish Armed Forces on the town of Kobani, may be imminent.
The SDF would undoubtedly fiercely resist any invasion across the Euphrates. But with Turkish air power, artillery, and drone capacity involved, the fighting would be bloody, and Turkish success likely. What would follow, given the existing track record of the SNA, would almost certainly be ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a large scale.
Focus on the US
THE MAIN front to prevent any such incursion is political and is focused on the United States. Senators Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.) and Chris Van Hollen (D.-Md.) introduced bipartisan legislation last week that would impose sanctions on Turkey in an effort to prevent an assault on the SDF east of the Euphrates.
It is not yet clear if these moves and other pressure will succeed. But given the strategic patience already displayed by the Turks in the Syrian context, it appears equally probable that their efforts to destroy the pro-US Kurdish authority will take at least initially a political, rather than military form.
On Tuesday, the interim Syrian authorities announced that an agreement had been reached following consultations for the dissolution of all armed factions in Syria. The consultations prior to the agreement, however, took place entirely between the HTS-led interim government, and the SNA. The SDF was not invited.
This appears to indicate that Ankara is set on a two-sided strategy in order to unify Syria under the rule of its Sunni Islamist clients. In this strategy, the threat of possible military intervention by Turkey will be maintained, while the SDF will be expected, in the shadow of this threat, to declare voluntarily its own dissolution before the rulers of the new, “unified” Syria. Otherwise, in the fullness of time, the newly equipped army of the new HTS regime will come across the Euphrates to “reunify” Syria by other means.
This strategy is likely to be aided by voices in the West, which recommend bowing to the Turkish project in order to keep Ankara “on side.” They will maintain that there is no longer any point in opposing the Turkish will in Syria, in backing lost causes, and so on.
For as long as roughly 2,000 US service personnel remain in eastern Syria, however, an all-out assault by Turkey remains an impossibility. The SNA by itself, meanwhile, appears not strong enough to make decisive advances against the SDF. So the stance of the US will be crucial.
From Israel’s point of view, the victory of Turkey in Syria ushers in a resurgence of Sunni political Islam on its borders. Also likely is a period of open competition between Israel and Turkey, with the latter in alliance with various Sunni Islamist forces, including those in the West Bank and Gaza.
Therefore, the interest is to keep the newly dominant forces as far away from Israeli communities as possible, and as militarily weak as possible, and to strengthen and preserve those elements resistant to the Turkish/Sunni Islamist project.
This explains Jerusalem’s current support for the Syrian Kurds and Israeli recent military moves. An SNA/Turkish victory in northeast Syria, and a reunited, resurgent Syria under Turkish and Sunni Islamist control, will constitute net losses for Israel in this new, emergent competition.