Occasional Paper Series - Threats Perceived and Real: - New Data and the Need for a New Approach

39 l May 2021 Threats Perceived and Real: New Data and the Need for a New Approach to the Turkish-SDF Border Conflict By Amy Austin Holmes INTRODUCTION of northern Syria, where Arab, Kurdish, and Syriac Christian members of the Syrian Democratic Forces The conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan (SDF) who fought alongside the United States Workers Party (PKK) is one of the largest and to defeat. [...] Turkish fears that the SDF/YPG would use their control of Syrian The new dataset presented in this paper allows territory as a launchpad for operations against Turkey for an impartial, objective, and quantitative were understandable given the decades-long history assessment of the conflict along the Syrian-Turkish of armed conflict and the fact that the leader of border. [...] with the assistance of the CIA, and brought to Turkey, where he has been imprisoned ever since.14 In the 1990s, Turkey launched major cross-border operations against the PKK in the Kurdish region of Even after designating the PKK as an FTO, northern Iraq, where the Turkish military maintains American officials warned Turkey against large- THREATS PERCEIVED AND REAL: New Data and the Need for a New. [...] used as a stepping stone to build confidence and the agreements are renegotiated.32 Indeed, most of the approximately sixty Syrian nationals who have been tried in Turkey for Over 10,000 young men and women in the SDF “disrupting the unity of the state and unity of died fighting against the Islamic State. [...] guarded the border between Egypt and Israel since 1981, in which a dozen different The views in this Occasional Paper are those of the countries contribute troops who rotate in and author, and do not reflect the position of the Wilson out of the Sinai.