The Turkish military fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria this weekend, a war monitoring group and a spokesman for the Kurdish group said on Sunday, illuminating the tangle of competing interests and alliances in Syria in the wake of the government’s collapse.
Fighting erupted on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near Syria’s border with Turkey, between rebel groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. At least 22 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group.
The clashes preceded a call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler.
The other fighters, the Syrian National Army, were supported in their assault of Manbij by Turkish air power, including warplanes, according to a spokesmen for the Syrian Democratic Forces. And a Turkish “kamikaze drone” exploded at a Kurdish military base on Saturday, according to the monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Turkey and the United States are allies, sworn to protect each other as members of the NATO alliance. Though both countries celebrated Sunday’s ouster of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, their interests diverge over support for the Kurds in northern Syria, far from Damascus, the capital.
In their call on Sunday, Mr. Austin and Mr. Guler agreed that coordination was necessary “to prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners,” according a readout of the conversation released by the Pentagon. The United States also acknowledged Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The Kurds have been instrumental partners for the United States in fighting the Islamic State, an Islamist terrorist group that rose to power early in Syria’s civil war, more than a decade ago.
The Kurds now control much of Syria’s northeast under an autonomous civil administration. About 900 U.S. troops are deployed to Syria to support the Kurdish forces. American forces have patrolled around Manbij with Turkey in the past, but it was not immediately clear if any U.S. troops were in the city this weekend during the Turkish bombardment.
On Sunday, the United States announced it had conducted one of the largest strikes against Islamic State targets in months.
Turkey views armed Kurds so close to its border as a threat. For decades Tukey has fought Kurdish separatists, who seek to carve out an independent country.
Turkey has backed several rebel groups in Syria, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group of seemingly reformed Al Qaeda members whose lightning-fast push to Damascus toppled the authoritarian government on Sunday. Turkey also has backed the Syrian National Army, a ragtag force made up of mercenaries and criminals, to help maintain a buffer zone along its border with Syria to guard against the activities of Kurdish militants.
Turkey and its proxies in the S.N.A. “are looking to utilize the current chaos to rewrite the map in Turkey’s favor,” said Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They are using the distraction of Damascus to continue to grab power during this time of chaos and to undermine the S.D.F., ensuring its negotiating power is weakened.”
The power vacuum created by the fall of Damascus presents an opportunity for Turkey to increase its power and influence in Syria generally but particularly along its border, said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The weekend’s fighting was condemned by the Kurdish-run civil administration of northern Syria.
“The other part of Syria is liberated from the tyranny of Assad,” said Sinam Mohamad, who represents the Kurdish autonomous region in its dealings with the United States.
Turkey and its proxies, he said, “want to create another conflict,” adding, “We don’t want to have conflict in the region.”
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