Earlier today we followed up on the plane/helicopter crash that took place in January of this year.
The report directly below is a follow up or following along update on the situation between Turkey and Israel & their Kurdish allies the PKK, rebranded long ago as the SDF to obfuscate the US/Israel/NATO ties to this known terror group. As previously mentioned there is conflict between Turkey and Israel regarding Syria… this is bound to worsen.
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.
Because the PKK was never going to disarm- these claims were always rubbish
This situation is now testing Ankara’s “red lines,” which can no longer be summarized in just one item but in two:
- Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must not be undermined.
- 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
- 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, (he’s not persuading them to disarm) 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Read the rest at the link above- Clearly Turkey’s walking a fine line on one side- With Israel, US and PKK allies on the other.