The United States Needs to Prepare to Kill Turks in Syria

The celebrations that ended the more than half-century of Assad family tyranny in Syria are over. In the short term, Russia and Iran are losers; Turkey is the winner. After all, Turkey was the prime backer of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that swept through Syria.

Washington, D.C., still has its fair share of cheerleaders. Turkey’s supposed strength attracts those who wish to ride its coattails or profit from it. Just as U.S. officials catapulted their work experience in Saudi Arabia into lucrative golden parachutes in the late 20^th century, so too do American officials with service in Turkey. Think tanks and universities also seek to suckle on the golden teat while pretending their work remains pure and they do not self-censor or cherry pick research topics to keep the funds flowing.

Many defense professionals still embrace Turkey because of Turkey’s role in NATO. It was one of only two NATO countries to border the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it has the second largest military of any NATO country. Troop numbers, however, are a meaningless metric; what matters more is the potential to utilize them for NATO missions. While the strategic importance of Incirlik Air Base has declined with the openings of alternatives in Greece and Romania, as well as more advanced amphibious assault vessels capable of transporting F-35s nearly anywhere in the world, the bureaucratic dynamic remains in the Pentagon loath to forfeit any base access. In effect, like Qatar with the al-Udeid Air Base, Turkey leverages the Incirlik as a get-out-of-jail-free card to avoid accountability for any number of malign behaviors. Defense professionals argue that Turkey’s early warning radar station at Malatya is essential to detect any launch of a potential Iranian nuclear weapon.

Too many Western officials and analysts make two basic mistakes when it comes to Turkey. First, they see Turkey as it was, or as they wish it to be, rather than as it is. Two decades of Erdoğanism have transformed the country irreversibly. Second, they believe that because Turkey is not Iran or Russia, it represents a positive force.

Iran’s relationship with Bashar al-Assad posed a threat. The Islamic Republic embraced Syria’s Alawis as a mechanism of its own revolutionary export. But one extremism does not erase the threat of another. Turkey’s support for radical Sunni movements is well-documented. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is open about his embrace of Hamas, but there is evidence of his diplomatic and economic, if not military, complicity with the most radical elements of the Sunni Islamist opposition, up to and including Al Qaeda and even Islamic State-linked groups.

It is simply false that Turkey, an irridentist power, is a force for stability in the region. Turkey destabilizes Cyprus, ships drones and other weaponry to Islamists in Libya, and then utilizes Libyans as mercenaries in its other fights. Turkey’s support for Islamist and undemocratic factions in Somalia increasingly risks fragile stability on the Horn of Africa. Its support for Hamas has thrown a life raft to a group solely responsible for the October 7, 2023, atrocity, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Turkey’s agenda in Syria is not Syrian stability or a Syria at peace with itself and its neighbors; rather, Turkey leverages Syrian Islamists against minority groups, especially Armenian Christians in Aleppo and Syrian Kurds in northeastern Syria. Erdoğan, for reasons apparently as irrational as they are racist, simply refuses to tolerate Syrian self-governance and the existence of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Those among the Washington think tank community who parrot Turkish talking points about the region as a terrorist base for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that threatens Turkey, or a pro-Iranian satrapy, are exclusively those who have not and often refuse to visit the region to investigate for themselves.

While Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani speaks about tolerance and even elections, Turkey demands that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham obey its orders to target the Kurds. Essentially, Turkey views Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham as Iran sees Hezbollah: a group that claims local legitimacy and wears a nationalist mantle, but in truth acts as a proxy for a foreign power. Erdoğan prioritizes his desire to kill armed Kurds—the same group that ally and cooperate with the United States to contain and defeat the Islamic State—over the risk of killing the Americans who partner with them.

When a Turkish drone struck unsuccessfully at General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces at Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sulaymaniyah International Airport in April 2023, only rain-sodden ground saved the accompanying Americans from fatality as the missile buried deeper into the ground before exploding.

In subsequent weeks, as Turkey has increased its air strikes against Kurdish regions in Syria, there have been several close calls in which Turkish strikes easily could have killed American servicemen or aid workers.

Turkey, meanwhile, inserts its own special forces and intelligence into Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and other proxy groups, effectively paralleling the role of the many Iranian advisors whom Tehran insisted played no combat role in Syria.

It may be diplomatically impolitic to say directly, but if Turkish-backed forces encourage terrorism and continue to pose threats to American forces countering the Islamic State in the region, it behooves the United States to begin a conversation about whether it may be necessary to target Turkish terror sponsors in the region. Turkey is a NATO member, but striking at its forces outside Turkey’s boundaries would not trigger NATO self-defense clauses. Nor should there be outrage at such discussion, especially when Turkey’s actions already cross the Rubicon and place American forces and interests in jeopardy.

The best opportunity to avoid direct conflict would be to recognize the trajectory of Turkey’s aggression outside its borders and the impact of its salami-slicing tactics could endanger Americans and to let Turkey know, in the interests of conflict avoidance, what the United States will be willing to do to protect its own personnel. If Turkey is willing to kill Americans operating in pursuit of official American policy inside Syria, then the United States should adopt the same policy and be willing to kill Turks outside Turkey’s own borders. It is a hard conversation, but it is increasingly a necessary one.