Syria: Will US arming of Kurdish-led Northeast Rebels Provoke Turkey?

http://www.juancole.com/2015/10/kurdish-northeast-provoke.html

Syria: Will US arming of Kurdish-led Northeast Rebels Provoke Turkey?
By Juan Cole | Oct. 13, 2015

The intrepid Anne Barnard and Karim Shoumali at the NYT have a piece on how Saudi-supplied TOW anti-tank weapons to rebels in Hama and Idlib are creating a US-Russian proxy struggle in northwest Syria (the CIA is actually the source of the weapons, with Saudi intelligence acting as the pass-through agency).

But there is another development in the past couple of days, this time in the northeast. A new coalition of Arab and Kurdish fighters has been formed there, including the YPG or People’s Protection Units. Since the YPG is technically an affiliate of the PKK or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organization, Turkey is very nervous about the de facto US alliance with it. That alliance just got stronger.

The Syrian Arab Coalition is some 3200 Arab fighters in the northeast. They have joined together with the Kurdish YPG as the Democratic Forces of Syria.

But let’s face it, this way of putting the matter (common in the news reports) obscures an important reality: the YPG is the important, large and effective element in this Democratic Forces of Syria. The 3200 Arab fighters are junior partners, and though more than window dressing, couldn’t dream of taking on Raqqa themselves. It was the YPG that pushed back Daesh this summer, and came within 40 miles of the capital of the phony caliphate. The YPG and its smaller Arab allies are being rebranded as the DFS because an Arab conquest of Raqqa looks more acceptable than a leftist Kurdish such victory.