Türkiye’s Euphrates Shield Operation – a crucial step for border security

Syria has long suffered from a brutal civil war that allowed terror groups like Daesh and the YPG/PKK to gain access to critical border areas in the Middle Eastern state neighbouring Türkiye. 

Ankara has had serious concerns about the growing influence of terror groups in Syria. To limit the capabilities of the terror groups before they destabilised the region, Türkiye launched anti-terror operations in northeastern Syria on August 24, 2016, hitting both Daesh and YPG/PKK positions. While Daesh was running amok, the YPG/PKK was pursuing its own agenda to destabilise the region and posed a direct threat to regional peace.

Hence, Operation Euphrates Shield became the first large-scale Turkish cross-border operation in Syria. The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, which is recognised as a terrorist organisation by Türkiye, the US and the EU. The PKK’s decades-long terror campaign has led to tens of thousands of deaths. 

While the Turkish army and allied groups from the Syrian opposition faced many complexities related to difficult terrain and the constantly changing equation of shifting alliances in the civil war, after seven-month-long fighting, Ankara successfully liberated areas between Azaz and Jarablus, securing a crucial border region for Türkiye. 

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the end of the Euphrates Shield on March 29, 2017, Ankara had already secured a swathe of territory in northeastern Syria, clearing much of the Daesh presence across its border. 

The operation implemented the two important Turkish objectives: kicking out Daesh from Turkish-Syria border areas and severing YPG’s connection points between Afrin, a northwestern region, which was also later liberated by Ankara in 2018 with the Olive Branch Operation, and other areas, from Ayn al Arab to Qamishli. 

In this perspective, the Euphrates Shield was a crucial milestone for Türkiye’s aim to dismantle both Daesh and the YPG/PKK from northern Syria and showing the world that the Turkish army is capable of fighting different terror groups at the same time. 

Let’s examine these two objectives closely to see how the operation has contributed to creating a relatively better security environment across northeastern Syria. 

Dismantling Daesh

The Turkish operation was a serious blow to Daesh’s presence in northern Syria. But the group’s losing control of Al Bab, a strategic city known as “gateway”, was also an equally important setback for the terrorist outfit for both psychological and military reasons. 

Al Bab was psychologically important for Daesh because it included a village called Dabiq, which is also the name of the group’s online magazine. Daesh has put enormous emphasis on the importance of Dabiq in its apocalyptic vision, so losing the territory was a significant blow in terms of psychological warfare against the group. 

The city’s loss was also a critical setback for Daesh from a military point of view. The city provided Daesh a vital link between areas under its control around Aleppo and territories close to Raqqa, the group's former self-proclaimed capital in northeastern Syria.

After losing areas across the Turkish-Syrian border, Daesh could not recover from those setbacks. It was an important achievement for Ankara, whose border towns have not faced any Daesh terror attacks since then. 

Prior to the Euphrates Shield, Turkish border towns like Karkamis were targeted by Daesh, which was also involved in some deadly terror bombings in Türkiye. 

Cutting YPG to pieces

The YPG/PKK has exploited Syria’s civil war conditions to carve out its large enclaves across northern Syria, allegedly under a secret deal with the Assad regime, which left the region in 2012 to allow the terror group to claim it. 

After US recommendation in 2015 the YPG rebranded itself as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), since then Washington has been arming and supporting the group under the pretext of fighting Daesh.

But back-to-back Turkish operations, which began with the Euphrates Shield and continued with other three offensives, including the Olive Branch (2018), Peace Spring (2019) and Spring Shield (2020), Ankara has shown to the YPG/PKK that its control in the region would come to an end sooner rather than later.

In that sense, the Euphrates Shield was a critical step for Türkiye’s aim to secure its border areas, pushing the YPG/PKK out from northern Syria. With the operation, Türkiye not only cut off YPG/PKK routes in different areas but also showed the terror group that it can not hold significant ground west of the Euphrates River. 

In 2015, Türkiye announced its ‘red lines’ on YPG presence west of the Euphrates, saying that if the YPG moved west of the river, Türkiye would have to intervene. Through its operations, Türkiye fulfilled its objectives concerning its red lines, securing a Turkish-administered territory between Ayn al Arab and opposition-controlled Idlib. 

The YPG/PKK has long aimed to connect its controlled regions in northeastern Syria with Afrin in order to create a ‘northern zone’ along Türkiye’s border to find a way to reach the Mediterranean Sea. 

But with Operation Olive Branch following the Euphrates Shield, Türkiye-backed forces were able to liberate Afrin and effectively connect the territories controlled through both operations. With Operation Peace Spring, Türkiye also liberated areas between Tel Abyad and Ras al Ayn, causing the terror group to suffer more losses in northeastern Syria. 

The Turkish leadership has recently stated that it plans to launch another large-scale operation against the YPG to finish the job against the group it started with the Euphrates Shield six years ago, dismantling the terror organisation from all of northern Syria.