Last Monday, Germany’s Defense Minister and Chairperson of the Christian Democrats (CDU), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), surprisingly raised a proposal for an internationally controlled safe zone in northern Syria. AKK who is currently Chancellor Merkel’s preferred successor, stated that Germany “cannot just stand by and watch and not do anything” about Syria, while outlining her safe zone suggestion, one that which would be internationally controlled and involve Turkey and Russia.

Following her statements, the question arose as to whether she had shared this idea with her coalition partners, and above all, with the actual office responsible for foreign issues, namely, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and its Social Democrat (SPD) foreign minister, Heiko Maas.

However, it became clear that neither the SPD nor the junior coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and its leader Markus Söder, were informed about AKK’s ambitious proposal. Consequently, a dispute occurred behind closed doors between the coalition partners, and the proposal as well as the possible deployment of German troops to northern Syria was severely contested.

The foreign minister’s initial comments also revealed the uncomfortable mood among the coalition members. Maas stated publicly that there were some unanswered questions and that Germany had received skepticism from its EU allies. He added that there was no current discussion among partners to create such an international safe zone, and criticized the time and style in which the proposal was made.

Despite similar irritation and silent criticism by other SPD members, it seems that CDU officials instead supported the defense minister in a quasi-obligatory way, while opposition parties criticized AKK’s proposal. For instance, the Left Party called the proposal “ridiculous”, while the Greens stated that the proposal raised more questions than answers. Interestingly, the former SPD chairman and foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, welcomed AKK’s proposal on its content.

Neither the SPD nor the junior coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU) were informed about AKK’s ambitious proposal.

In the following days, though, AKK accused Turkey of annexing parts of northern Syria which consequently caused a backlash even from the German public. Thus, some opposition members harshly criticized the defense minister for spreading “false information” while others described her as “incompetent on such issues”. AKK’s usage of the term “annexation” showed her lack of knowledge regarding military issues. It is generally accepted that there is no intention of a permanent integration of northern Syria into Turkey, which makes AKK’s assertion even more unacceptable.

One day following her public proposal, AKK did not receive the hoped for support from other NATO defense ministers. Furthermore, this recent weekend, Foreign Minister Maas made a surprise visit to Ankara, where he indirectly criticized his colleague’s safe zone proposal. When he was asked about the unclear plan, Maas answered “we were told it was not realistic. Therefore, we prioritized issues that are more important for us at the moment.”

Given the current circumstances; how should we comment on these recent events? It is quite interesting to observe that AKK is preferring to use language which stresses that the situation in Syria is massively compromising the security interests of Germany and Europe. She also criticized both actors for acting too much like “onlookers” and argued that only “a political initiative from Germany for a European advance through NATO makes sense.” But what may be AKK’s main purpose and interest in proposing such an unrealistic step, one which even the German Foreign Minister had to dismiss during his recent visit in Ankara?

Actually, it is no doubt a risky step that aimed to increase her political importance and public popularity, which has been gradually decreasing over the past couple of months. In addition, the recent blow in the Thuringia state elections has also been related to AKK’s performance as the CDU chairperson.

Therefore, as the potential future German chancellor, AKK most likely made a move to achieve a success story on an international platform. This, however, did not receive that much support and even deteriorated the intra-coalition relations, as Maas had stressed during his short-planned visit to Ankara, in which Maas made it clear that Germany’s foreign policy was not determined by the CDU leader and defense minister, but by his ministry. However, other CDU politicians and even opposition figures preferred to criticize Maas’ undiplomatic words that targeted (and even offended) their cabinet colleague.

At the end of the day, the move by the CDU leader will most likely not contribute positively towards her ambitions of becoming Germany’s next chancellor in 2021. Although her previous rival for chancellor, Friedrich Merz is not currently attacking her personally, he has focused attention instead on Chancellor Merkel as the main person responsible of the electoral defeat in Thuringia and other failings of the party. Importantly, Merz recently stressed that the current grand coalition could not continue until 2021.

While these were not direct criticisms of AKK, it can be surmised that such statements will ultimately affect the position of AKK herself, and the future of the coalition partnership as a whole. One which has suffered heavily due to the recent unplanned safe zone move by AKK and the undiplomatic reactions by the foreign minister abroad.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said earlier in September that he would discuss the problems between Turkey and the United States when he met with the U.S. President Donald Trump on September 25, as part of his trip to New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. But neither side has revealed what was discussed and if anything was resolved.

There was no shortage of issues for the two leaders to talk about. There are still Americans imprisoned in Turkey. The U.S. refuses to deport Fetullah Gülen, whom Ankara holds responsible for the 2016 coup attempt. There is an ongoing dispute over the enforcement of sanctions on Iran. Perhaps most immediately and gravely, Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 anti-aircraft system from Russia will, by the letter of American law, incur sanctions that could do serious harm to the Turkish economy.

Still, there are creative ways around most of these issues. For example, the U.A.E. has strong economic ties with Iran, and the U.S. abides it. Proposals have already been put forth to finesse the S-400 issue, and so on. The crux of the U.S.-Turkey dispute, and the one where interests are radically incompatible, is Syria.

In the summer of 2011, after months of trying to find a peaceful resolution between Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and protesters failed because of the regime’s  continuing murder of civilians, the Turkish government, which already provided a safe haven for refugees fleeing the carnage, began supporting the nascent armed rebellion. The U.S. ostensibly supported the revolutionary movement, though never seriously tried to tip the balance in its favor and over time shifted its policy ever-more-firmly in Assad’s favour for reasons related to Iran policy.

When the U.S. was eventually forced to intervene in Syria in late 2014 by the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS / Daesh), the U.S. tried to engage in counter-terrorism alone. The U.S. wanted to avoid entanglement in the underlying Syrian war, particularly any anti-Assad activity, because the Iranians had made it clear that they would walk away from nuclear negotiations if their proxy regime in Syria was threatened. The attempt by the U.S. to run a narrow counter-terrorism war in Syria was inherently flawed on its own terms, since Assad was the incubator of ISIS and counter-terrorism cannot be separated from the political context. But in the choice of partner for this mission, the U.S. created a whole new crisis.

The U.S. chose to work with the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), to defeat ISIS. The PYD/YPG has had close relations with the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran for decades, and retained cordial relations with the pro-Assad coalition after the war began. The PYD/YPG thus could be trusted not to draw the U.S. into a confrontation with the regime. As a side-effect of the anti-ISIS war, the PYD/YPG was left in control of nearly one-third of Syria that ISIS had taken away from the rebels—a radical redrawing of the political map in Syria that the U.S. was publicly opposed to meddling in. And this created problems that were not limited to Syria.

The PYD/YPG that the U.S. has so vastly empowered is a department of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist group that has waged war on Turkey since the mid-1980s. The attempt to rebrand this force as the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) by attaching a few dependent Arab groups might suffice to convince the Western media that “Rojava” is a multi-ethnic democracy, but it is hardly convincing to the people who live under its authoritarian rule.

Whatever the ethnic composition of the SDF and its civilian affiliates, the PKK retains sole military-political control. Within Syria, this has created an explosive situation where a demographically and politically alien party is ruling over resistant Arab populations, and for Turkey a PKK state on its borders is seen, not unreasonably, as a dire security threat. That the U.S. is underwriting this project has created a rift in NATO that Russia has been quick to exploit.

Turkey has twice intervened in Syria, in 2016 and 2018, to push the PKK away from areas of its border in the west and continues to hold these zones through Syrian Arab proxies. These operations left the PKK holding territory mostly to the east of the Euphrates, and Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to initiate a third operation against this zone.

The U.S.’s response to this has been to try to avert a Turkish incursion in eastern Syria where its own forces are based. To do this, the U.S. proposed the “Manbij roadmap”, a model that would, in theory, assuage Ankara’s concerns by removing YPG/PKK control of various urban centres and setting up joint U.S.-Turkish patrols. This has since morphed into a proposal for a “safe zone” that would buffer between Turkey’s border and the PKK-held areas. Given the failure of this concept in Manbij, where the PKK simply reflagged its cadres, Ankara was understandably sceptical to begin with and negotiations have duly stalled. While there has been misdirection on all sides, and proposals for the U.S. to arm-and-equip a 100,000-man PKK force in Syria indefinitely do little to improve the atmosphere, the fundamental problem is less bad faith than diametrically opposed priorities.

Turkey sees the PKK as the primary issue and wants a twenty-mile (30 km) zone under its control inside Syria to deal with this. The U.S., focused monomaniacally on ISIS, wishes to preserve “stability”, however short-termist the definition, and is therefore prepared to grant a much more limited Turkish presence in an area it intends to continue to control, but which is supposedly clear of PKK forces. Displeased with the process, the Turkish government has attempted to gain leverage by signaling a willingness to act unilaterally.

In early August, Erdogan said that Turkey could “only be patient for so long”. At the end of that month, the Turkish president said, “If our soldiers do not control the region [east of the Euphrates] within a few weeks, we will put our own operation plan into effect”. On 18 September, Erdogan said the U.S. has two weeks (to 2 October) to deliver “results”, or else Turkey would go it alone. Most recently, in his U.N. speech, just hours before he met Trump, Erdogan spoke of establishing a 30-km “peace corridor” along a 480-km stretch of the Syria-Turkey border into which two million Syrian refugees in Turkey could be resettled. To underline his point, Erdogan brought along a map.

So, what happens now?

It is extremely unlikely that Turkey will intervene east of the Euphrates by the early October deadline, and highly unlikely that Ankara will risk clashing with U.S. forces at any other time. As such, some version of the status quo—with the U.S. buying time and Turkey preparing to intervene but never quite getting there—could perpetuate for quite some time. That said, low probability, high impact events are not unknown in the Middle East, and this is a situation that has two major wildcards, Erdogan and Trump, plus a trendline that from several angles favours one particular outcome.

From the Trump side, he wants to leave Syria—he has tried twice and been restrained by his officials—and it is possible that he might finally get his way, especially with people like National Security Adviser John Bolton now out of the administration. Trump’s “maximum pressure” rhetoric is a thin veneer for his desire for a deal with Iran, and he might well follow Obama in trading Syria away to get Tehran’s signature.

If the U.S. withdraws under a deal to let the Turks in, it could significantly mend U.S.-Turkey relations; without a deal, Erdogan could still get what he wants but there would be much less political windfall to the alliance. It is also possible, however, that the U.S. would withdraw after organizing with Russia to reconcile the PKK and the Assad/Iran system. Even if Turkey got a narrow buffer zone under this latter arrangement, it would fully restore to Damascus the PKK weapon it used for decades against Turkey.

On the other side, because it is so clear Trump wants out—the number of U.S. troops has been halved to 1,000 this year—Erdogan might calculate that an incursion would not result in triggering the U.S. tripwire, but in Trump deciding to wash his hands of the Syria dilemma altogether. He might even be correct, though it would be a reckless gambit with profound political costs to a relationship with America that is, after all, and despite the current President’s view, about more than just Trump.

In an earlier column, I wrote that the YPG will continue to harm Turkey-US relations, stating that the formation of allegedly new local military councils by the YPG might sabotage US-Turkey negotiations over the safe zone in northern Syria. Currently, despite the visible differences between Turkey and the US over its labeling and approach, the safe zone deal seems to be progressing, as both sides conducted their first joint patrol east of the Arab-populated Tal Abyad city. However, remarks by Turkish President Erdogan, and the visible differences between the United States European Command (EUCOM) and the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) are strong indicators that the entire enterprise might fail. In this manner, the latest action by CENTCOM of conducting joint patrols with a YPG front group immediately after the joint Turkish-American patrol at the border region, indicates that CENTCOM knows how to sabotage the deal, and is willing to do so to reassert its position as the main policy-maker in Syria, preferring the interests of its local partner over the US, and to undermine the extensive role of EUCOM.

Regardless of how one may assess the deal over the safe zone between Ankara and Washington, the deal stands. But with the deal’s implementation, differences between Ankara and Washington and between CENTCOM and EUCOM have become more visible. While the Turkish Defense Ministry and the published deal between Ankara and Washington speak of a safe zone to be evolved into a peace-corridor, US officials constantly refer to it as a security mechanism instead. This framing by the US is a sign of the attempts to control the discourse around the US-Turkey safe zone deal in Syria, and to avoid making legally binding statements, but it also represents the different approach of both sides. Turkish President Erdogan made the differences clear as he said: “While Turkey is determined to remove the [PKK/YPG] terrorist group [from northern Syria], the US wants to straddle both us and them. It seems that the US is willing to establish a safe zone for the terrorist group”.

The entire safe zone deal becomes even more complicated due to the differences between EUCOM and CENTCOM. CENTCOM has long been the US’s only policy-making and implementing body in Syria and formed a close bond to the YPG terror group. The reluctance of the Obama administration to take strategic responsibility in Syria, and the ignorance of the Trump administration towards the details on the ground enabled CENTCOM to become the sole US actor in Syria. CENTCOM officials, the foremost being Brett McGurk, see the partnership with the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as a milestone in the US approach to the Middle East. In the eyes of CENTCOM officials, the engagement with the YPG proved effective with low costs and no combat fatalities for the US. Over time, CENTCOM officials not only adopted the ideas and arguments of the YPG, but also made their alignment open to the public, even following YPG-affiliated official and non-official figures and sharing their tweets.

On the other side, EUCOM was more critical of the approach by CENTCOM and underlined the importance of Turkey to the NATO alliance. EUCOM officials have seen CENTCOM activities as steps weakening the NATO front and ignoring the threat perception of a critical NATO ally. The debacle in progress by CENTCOM had to be cleaned up by EUCOM. Therefore, it is no wonder that EUCOM played a critical role in the safe zone negotiations and enabled the deal despite CENTCOM’s resistance. US diplomats with knowledge of the safe zone deal state that CENTCOM was told that they do not have a say on this matter and must accept the deal. Actually, one of the main problems with the deal is the EUCOM-CENTCOM balance of power. Turkey falls within the scope of EUCOM’s concerns, but Syria is within the operational area of CENTCOM. The safe zone deal was brokered by EUCOM, but CENTCOM’s forces have to implement it on the ground. The difference became public when CENTCOM’s twitter account embedded a tweet by EUCOM only to say: “A combined-joint operation between EUCOM, CENTCOM, and Turkey for the security of northeast Syria” warning that the safe zone deal is not a tango between EUCOM and Turkey.

While the safe zone deal with Turkey was formed to address Turkey’s security concerns, the deal might end up provoking rivalry over power between EUCOM and CENTCOM, in which the US State Department and the US Special Envoy James Jeffrey might finally get control over Syrian affairs. The inter-military dispute over the balance between a key NATO ally and a local partner divides EUCOM and CENTCOM. EUCOM’s perspective may be more viable for international relations in a global sense and in the spirit of the NATO alliance, but it’s CENTCOM who is in charge in Syria. CENTCOM’s approach is limited, and prefers to engage with a non-state armed actor. As CENTCOM’s area of responsibility doesn’t cover any NATO state, it doesn’t value the NATO alliance as much as EUCOM. In this manner, the divergences between EUCOM and CENTCOM over how to respond to Turkey’s legitimate security concerns will continue, but CENTCOM has the capability and seemingly the will to sabotage the safe zone deal with Turkey. If CENTCOM wins this round of internal rivalry with EUCOM, the NATO alliance not only might face a huge setback as EUCOM weakens against CENTCOM, but CENTCOM may also grow into a hierarchy problem. People with knowledge about the entire safe zone discussion pointed out that the appointment of James Jeffrey after Brett McGurk’s resignation has been viewed with dissatisfaction by CENTCOM officials, and that Jeffrey and the US State Department have a tough time to enforcing their will on CENTCOM in Syria.

Therefore, the success of the safe zone deal is in the interests of the US State Department and James Jeffrey, and they must reassert control over CENTCOM and re-establish an order of command to ensure that CENTCOM is not a policy-making actor but a policy-implementing figure in Syria. James Jeffrey and the US State Department have long argued that it is wrong to ignore Turkey’s interests and doing so may ultimately end in a bigger escalation. It is only with the push from EUCOM, the threats by Turkey to launch a unilateral military operation and Trump’s unforeseen decision to withdraw from Syria that have enabled the safe zone deal with Turkey. Since the start of the counter-Daesh campaign, CENTCOM has been in charge but despite Daesh’s territorial defeat, CENTCOM isn’t willing to handover the power it shouldn’t have obtained in the first place. Now, Turkey is helping the US to re-establish order in its own house with its threats of unilateral action and with the safe zone deal, but CENTCOM knows how to sabotage agreements. CENTCOM succeeded in doing so during the Manbij roadmap, and this time tries to do so again by portraying the military councils formed by the YPG as local forces. This is despite knowing that such a move can trigger Turkey to end the safe zone deal or stall its implementation process. Such a move may end in a failure for EUCOM, blocking the US State Department and James Jeffrey from gaining control, and allowing CENTCOM to go on as the policy-making actor in Syria.