Clashes between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, did not come in a vacuum.
Tensions between the two sides have been high as an end-of-year deadline to incorporate the SDF into the Syrian armed forces approaches.
The fighting erupted on Monday afternoon during a visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan but had ended by that evening after the two sides agreed to halt firing.
Analysts told Al Jazeera that the SDF, led by military leader Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) and the Syrian government, have seemingly reached an impasse on how to integrate the Kurdish fighters into the new state military structure and that a failure to find a serious deal could lead to renewed bouts of fighting or military confrontation between the two sides.
“The red lines of the [Kurdish] self-administration on one hand, and Turkiye/Damascus on the other, do present some striking incompatibility, and I do not see a way that the two can be reconciled,” Thomas McGee, the Max Weber Fellow specialising on Syria at the European University Institute in Florence
On March 10, the new Syrian government in Damascus, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the SDF signed a historic agreement that planned to integrate the latter group into Syria’s new armed forces by the end of 2025.
The SDF is largely made up of members of the People’s Defense Units (YPG), the military wing of the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK is labelled a “terrorist” organisation by the United States, the European Union and Turkiye.
Turkiye has backed Damascus and even threatened unilateral military intervention should an agreement not be reached.
“We just hope that things go through dialogue, negotiations and peacefully. We don’t want to see any need to resort to military means again. But SDF should understand the patience of the relevant actors is running out,” Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan told Turkish state media.
After a decades-long armed rebellion by the PKK, Turkiye has reached a deal with the group to disarm and lay down its weapons. Despite Fidan’s strong words, analysts said it is unlikely it would want to undermine those talks by militarily confronting the SDF.
