Can Post-Assad Clashes In Syria Be Stopped?
Finding common ground with Turkey will be critical to Syria’s transition.
Security continues to deteriorate in northeast Syria as ongoing clashes threaten the country’s transition towards an era of stabilization and recovery. Increased military activity, coupled with a wave of accelerated diplomacy inside and outside the country, is upending the balance of power that long prevailed when Syria’s conflict was effectively frozen.
As fighting in the northeast persists, officials in Ankara and Washington are bolstering their positions inside the country. Both are centralizing intensive diplomacy as Turkey works with its local Syrian partners to pressure the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to expel their Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) allies. Ultimately, these talks are critical to securing this stage in Syria’s transition, potentially resolving the Kurdish question in Turkey and Syria while laying the groundwork for a U.S. military withdrawal.
Operation Dawn of Freedom
On November 30, in the shadow of the military offensive that toppled Assad, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) initiated Operation Dawn of Freedom to expel foreign non-state armed groups and unify Syrian territory. However, the operation is largely focused on separating the PKK from their Syrian arm, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), and the broader SDF.
As Assad’s forces fled Aleppo, they handed over strategic areas to the SDF—a final act in their long-standing cooperation when facing opposition or Turkish threats. However, the SDF could not hold its position in northern Aleppo’s Tel Refaat to establish a corridor that runs across north Syria, resorting to war crimes against civilians in an attempt to delay any SNA advance.
Witness testimony also attributes infrastructure sabotage and indiscriminate artillery shelling to the SDF. Local sources note that the SNA, while responsible for its own laundry list of human rights violations, has curtailed such tactics in their post-December 8 fight with the SDF. Still, the group is committing serious human rights violations.
According to informed sources, the SNA’s operation is divided into three phases. The first phase focused on clearing the SDF out of Aleppo, where it occupied enclaves in Tel Refaat and the historically Kurd-majority Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo City. The second phase aims to cross the Euphrates River, pushing the SDF out of Arab-majority Raqqa and Deir Ezzor towards Kurdish-majority Qamishli.
This phase has proven difficult, with multiple fronts activated simultaneously. So far, the operation has forced the SDF out of Manbij after intense fighting, but the SNA lines are now frozen along the river. The third phase aims to dissolve the SDF and YPG, removing their hegemony over Syrian Kurd politics and expelling foreign elements with separatist agendas—namely the PKK.
To counter this operation, the SDF took reflexive measures to turn the Euphrates into a natural border, using legitimate Kurdish concerns regarding previous SNA actions and the general lack of clarity regarding Syria’s future and territorial integrity to maintain control. The SDF’s military commander, Mazloum Abdi (formerly Ferhad Shaheen), also initiated regional negotiations, constantly shifting SDF positions in the talks and giving gradual concessions to advance his group’s interests.
Meanwhile, leading Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) official Ilham Ahmed is engaged in shuttle diplomacy with the West, raising concerns about minority rights, an Islamic State (ISIS) resurgence, and a skewed interpretation of constitutional reform based on confederalism—not federalism. The SDC is the political wing of the SDF’s administrative arm, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
The United States, SDF, and PKK
The YPG has dominated the SDF’s leadership since its inception, partly with their forces but largely via the PKK. The U.S. government designated the PKK a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997 and listed it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2001 under Executive Order 13224. It largely operates through local offshoots in Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.
Yet despite its long history of terror bombings, the Obama administration chose to train and equip the YPG, which formed the SDF in 2015. Brett McGurk led this effort as a special envoy due to his prior experience in Iraq. He used U.S. funding appropriated for defeating ISIS to build administrative structures for the SDF against the national security concerns of Iraq and Turkey.
The first Trump administration attempted to fix these regional imbalances, exposing McGurk’s fragmented policy. Trump forced McGurk out and appointed James Jeffries to reduce the U.S. troop presence and formalize it under a bilateral treaty, shifting from direct support for non-state armed groups. Jeffries promised to limit lethal assistance to the SDF and focus on blocking the Iranian land corridor that continuously destabilized Syria and threatened U.S. troops. This effort was only partially realized as Jeffries hid troop deployment numbers and other details from the president.
Turkish Interests and U.S. Policy Shifts
The SDF’s latest diplomacy includes an effort to negotiate with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan for the orderly removal of PKK elements from Syria. This is occurring in parallel to Ankara’s talks aimed at ending their broader war with the group. Turkish and American delegates intensified meetings with Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leaders in Iraq in a last-ditch attempt to solve the PKK problem and end the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance. Turkish intelligence eliminated PKK leadership in Syria’s Hasaka and Iraq’s Suleimaniya in recent years, weakening their negotiating position.
Weakening the PKK is affording Syrian Kurds unaligned with the SDF—including the Kurdish National Council (KNC)—an opportunity to organize. However, their efforts are hindered by the force, which has banned their activities, jailed their leaders, and limited their movements. Ongoing, years-long talks to address the Syrian Kurd political groups have picked up steam since Assad’s fall.
Rumors of a resolution of the Turkey-PKK conflict do not necessarily mean the group will fully disband. Abdi’s support for any public call from Ocalan to disband will help in the effort to disband the YPG/PKK, opening room for both Kurdish and Syrian unity in Syria. The situation is fragile, as previous Turkey-PKK talks highlight, and may require minimum force on the part of Damascus, Ankara, and SDF remnants to remove foreign fighters—the former two stakeholders’ main priorities.
Washington ultimately has a role to play. The Biden administration’s NSC, aided by strong Congressional support for the SDF, secretly expanded the troop presence in Syria while exposing them to attacks given their remote positions. Their effort failed to bring stability as they attempted to micromanage elusive armed groups as secretly as possible while exaggerating threats to justify the troop presence, highlighting the mission creep that has come to define U.S. military deployments abroad.
While ISIS remains a security risk, the threat is exaggerated and used as a flawed legal justification to maintain and expand U.S. troops on the ground. As to the detention facilities in eastern Syria, repatriation, prosecution, and remedy is the solution, with regional and local and regional forces bolstering prison security as that process advances.
Thus, the incoming administration faces the challenge of promoting an orderly transition. Key to this approach is finding common ground with Turkey. That includes regional forces, under Ankara’s leadership, managing the security component of Syria’s transition alongside the Syrian Caretaker Government.
Such an approach can garner a relatively easy and critical win for U.S. foreign policy. The Trump administration would be wise to employ swift diplomacy that rejects the status quo, is forward-looking and clear-eyed regarding Syria’s transition, and prioritizes a military withdrawal.
Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst and Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities. He is focused on the geopolitics of the Levant and the broader dynamics of West Asia. Follow him on X: @langloisajl.