Turkey’s Looming Invasion of Syria Tests US-Kurdish Ties

Turkey has emerged as a swing player in the Ukraine war. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one of the few Nato leaders to still maintain communication with Vladimir Putin. Russian and American spy chiefs have met on Turkish soil, while Ankara has helped broker a UN-backed deal to unblock Black Sea grain.

“You cannot extricate what’s going on in northern Syria from the wider political climate,” Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for New American Security and a former Department of Defence official, told MEE.

While Erdogan has billed himself as a mediator, critics see an untrustworthy partner leveraging Turkey’s position inside Nato to extract concessions on foreign policy goals that run counter to western interests.

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