War on the Rocks

The American Deconfliction Disadvantage: Ankara's Drone Campaign in
Syria and Iraq

By Aaron Stein
Oct. 6, 2021


The Turkish government has increased the frequency of its drone
strikes against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Syria and Iraq
since 2019. Turkey’s strategy is easy to understand. Ankara is using
low-cost, persistent airpower to strike PKK leaders and lower-ranking
cadres in areas that it could not previously reach. Following a series
of Turkish military offensives, the strikes have further intensified
pressure on the PKK and its affiliates and have pushed them further
from Turkey’s southeast border.

In the coming years, these drone strikes are likely to remain a
persistent feature of Turkey’s counter-terrorism campaign. Ankara has
no incentive to stop them. At the same time, these strikes will not
incapacitate the PKK or end its four-decade-long fight, despite the
strikes showing clear signs of degrading the group’s capabilities. As
a result, Turkey’s drone strikes will create more tension in the
U.S.-Turkish relationship and more tensions between Washington and its
counter-Islamic State partners in Syria.

Washington almost certainly will not apply sufficient pressure on
Ankara to stop these strikes. For the United States, there is no
Kurdistan, so Kurdish issues are subordinated to the relations with
countries in which Kurds reside. This reasonable approach means that
Washington will almost certainly favor Ankara over a non-state actor,
outside the pressing national security concerns created by the war
against the Islamic State. Rather than engage in a futile debate about
whether the United States can or should stop Turkish drone strikes,
policymakers should focus on managing the fallout across the region.

Turkey’s Forever War

Turkey has been fighting the PKK since the 1980s. The latest round of
the conflict began in July 2015, with the end of a troubled — but
promising — peace process. But Turkey’s own “forever war” retains a
high level of support from the government and the broader population.
In this context, Ankara has prioritized the development of indigenous
drones. Their deployment has proved valuable in decreasing risks to
Turkish soldiers and striking PKK lines of communication inside
northern Iraq and northern Syria. In short, the use of low-cost
airpower is not a significant drain on Turkish resources and has had
positive military outcomes.

As Turkish drone use has expanded, so have the number of drone
strikes, marrying drone technology with Ankara’s cross-border
operations in Syria and Iraq. This has increased Turkish presence in
traditional PKK strongholds in eastern Iraq. Ankara has managed to
leverage its dominant economic position to carve out tighter ties with
the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls Erbil and is the most
powerful Iraqi Kurdish political party. Iraqi Kurds, in general, are
riven by division and the Kurdistan Democratic Party benefits from its
close relationship with Ankara. As a result, while drone strikes have
generated popular protest in northern Iraq, there is little political
cost for Ankara.

The PKK, in response, has grown more diffuse, attacking Turkish
military targets inside Iraq and using proxies to conduct a persistent
insurgency in Turkish-occupied Syria. These tactics, for Ankara, are
indicative of PKK weakness. The group has been pushed from its
traditional strongholds inside Turkey, and the main areas of contact
are now inside Iraq. This position is advantageous to Ankara, even if
it does little to politically address the drivers of Kurdish anger
toward the state or the appeal of the PKK to a minority of Turkish
citizens.

American Incoherence

Turkey’s drone strikes pose a political problem for the United States.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Syrian-Kurdish militia with which
Washington partnered to defeat the Islamic State, has direct links to
the PKK, and Turkey’s strikes have repeatedly targeted its officials.
These strikes are occurring while U.S. forces are on the ground in
Syria working alongside the group. The Turkish strikes in Syria began
after Turkish talks with Washington to establish a permanent presence
in northeastern Syria failed and then led to the start of Operation
Peace Spring, the name Ankara gave to its October 2019 invasion. In
Iraq, the drone strikes have increased in frequency during this same
time period, mirroring the country’s technological advances with
drones and munitions.

In the Middle East, there is a pervasive belief that Washington is
omnipotent and, if properly motivated, can force countries to do its
bidding. For this reason, the Syrian Kurdish leadership is convinced
that Washington has the power to stop Turkish strikes if it wanted to,
but that the U.S. government simply chooses not to. The U.S. military,
therefore, is facing a situation where its partner forces will come
under attack, despite the presence of U.S. forces in the area.

This reality demonstrates the importance of the deconfliction
mechanisms that Washington and Ankara already have in place. But it
also clearly shows that these mechanisms cannot do anything more than
provide notification for Turkish air operations in places the United
States is also present. Indeed, the instruments that Washington uses
to deconflict with Turkey do not hinder Turkish air operations. In
Syria, the United States has ceded much of the border to Turkey,
giving Ankara a clear cut “deconfliction box” from which to fly and
strike in support of its goals.

Making matters more complicated, the United States actually supports
Turkey’s airstrikes against PKK targets in Iraqi Kurdistan. When
Washington made the decision to deepen support for the Syrian Kurds
before the assault on Raqqa, it sought to overcome Turkish objections
by providing Turkey assistance with its kinetic strikes in Iraq. But,
even were Washington to stop, Turkish capabilities have grown
considerably in recent years and now account for the vast majority of
intelligence in the area.

Turkish-American Deconfliction

Put simply, the United States has no true solution to this new
reality, nor does it have a clear policy regarding Turkish drone
strikes.

The United States and Turkey have historically cooperated on aerial
surveillance. This cooperation has been fraught and marred by
distrust. The Turkish Air Force has operated consistently in northern
Iraq for close to three decades. The United States and Turkey have a
deconfliction agreement there that Washington manages in coordination
with the Iraqi government. According to my interviews with U.S.
military officials, there is deconfliction line drawn across northern
Iraq. Ankara has control over areas to the north of the line. The
United States has control to the south. The areas of control are
subdivided into boxes dubbed keypads that correspond to a place on a
map, with a pre-notification mechanism to manage flights inside
keypads to the north and south of the line. Before most flights,
Ankara informs the United States of where it intends to fly, if the
flight is armed or not, and whether a strike is planned. The United
States can “non-concur” with planned strikes, but Turkey is not
obligated to listen to Washington.

In parallel, the United States also devoted its own surveillance
assets to assist Turkey. This intelligence relationship increased
during the Syrian civil war, particularly since 2017 when the United
States began devoting more Reaper drone orbits and allowing for the
resulting intelligence to be used for lethal strikes. However, U.S.
officials familiar with the program have told me that the Turkish side
was unwilling to share sensitive data about the PKK with the United
States, and that the United States did not share all of the data
needed to conduct an airstrike. Instead, Washington shared coordinates
and information that have allowed Turkish drones to get very close to
suspected targets, where they could then conduct the strike on its
own. Therefore, U.S. assets do not often yield much usable
intelligence for Ankara but have led to strikes on numerous occasions.
In any case, this cooperation was reportedly halted after Turkey’s
October 2019 invasion, ending a program that had begun in 2007 and was
expanded during the nadir of the relationship.

The proliferation of indigenous Turkish drones has extended Ankara’s
reach, which has undermined any coercive effect from the program’s
suspension. The United States, according to my interviews, has little
understanding of Turkish targeting methodology or how strikes are
planned or carried out. Regardless, it is clear that Ankara is
striking more targets than ever before and striking more high value
targets and mid-tier PKK commanders throughout Iraq and Syria.

Ankara’s Deconfliction Box in Syria

The United States and Turkey have a similar deconfliction agreement in
Syria. Turkey can now operate freely on the ground and in the air
within a “box” stretching roughly 20 kilometers into Syrian territory
along the border between the towns of Tel Afar to Tel Abyad. The
agreement on Turkey’s “box” stemmed from Ankara’s escalatory actions
and repeated threats to invade U.S.-held territory in northeastern
Syria. In August 2019, Turkish threats became more credible, prompting
U.S. diplomatic action to try and manage the threat from the Turkish
military. This approach resulted in the formation of a Combined Joint
Operations Center, or CJOC, based in Sanliurfa, Turkey, where the two
countries coordinated joint ground and helicopter patrols. This
diplomatic approach allowed for the Turkish Air Force to overfly
Syria, necessitating participation in the Air Tasking Order — the
mechanism used to control all coalition airstrikes and activity during
Operation Inherent Resolve. This initially involved unmanned
surveillance platforms but, with the start of joint ground patrols,
grew to include armed Turkish F-16s on-call for troops in potential
contact situations.

This arrangement did not prevent a Turkish invasion. In October 2019,
the Turkish army occupied a stretch of Syrian territory across the
border. The Turkish Air Force does have the option to strike targets
in Syria from inside its own airspace. However, the flight time for
most weapons Ankara uses to strike inside Syria is somewhere between
five and 10 minutes from weapons release to impact. This means that
fleeting targets cannot really be struck from positions inside Turkey,
thereby requiring overflight to hit moving targets. As a result,
Turkey has dramatically increased the number of drone strikes within
its “box.” Outside of this area, however, the situation is more
chaotic. During Ankara’s October 2019 invasion, for example, Air Force
pilots I interviewed explained how U.S. jets, Turkish drones, and
Russian jets were all operating in close proximity with one another
with no coordination or deconfliction. The situation has stabilized,
somewhat, because the United States has less overhead presence in
areas Turkey controls. It is unclear if Russia and Turkey have a
similar deconfliction arrangement, but anecdotal evidence from Idlib
suggests the two sides have an agreement to not directly target each
other’s platforms.

A Constant Irritant

Turkish strikes against Syrian Democratic Forces officials have led to
widespread protests and calls for Washington to take action. For
Ankara, of course, the fact that its drone strikes disrupt
U.S.-Kurdish ties is a net positive. The United States is seeking to
simultaneously support its NATO ally with counter-terrorism assistance
and work with Ankara’s enemy to defeat the Islamic State. Ankara has
objected to this arrangement, and its drone campaign takes advantage
of American incoherence on the topic.

The United States may have little leverage to stop Turkish action, but
the split policy means that Washington is riven by division and cannot
agree on pushing for de-escalation between the two groups. The
provision of lethal support, for example, was intended to sooth
Turkish concerns about the rise of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Instead, the lethal support has indirectly helped increase the
frequency of drone strikes, which leads to Kurdish reprisal attacks
and a continued cycle of violence. The ideal off-ramp, of course, is a
return to peace talks, but Washington has few good options to pressure
Turkey to return to a peace process. More importantly, the politics in
Turkey do not support such a move. Until this political reality
changes, Turkish drone strikes will be a constant irritant to U.S.
interests that have to be managed.