BEIRUT: Having greatly expanded their control into areas previously held by Daesh (ISIS), the Kurds in the northeastern part of Syria must now consider their next move. With well-armed actors hostile to the idea of an independent state and a lack of certainty over foreign patrons, the Kurds must try and play the political game well or else risk losing their territorial spoils in further bloody conflict.

Benefitting from U.S. military support in the form of airstrikes and weapons, the Syrian Democratic Forces, spearheaded by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), has hitherto proved itself an effective fighting force; just last month, it made the hugely significant advance of taking the city of Raqqa, the then-de facto capital of Daesh.

The different cantons in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, commonly known as the Rojova region, have become increasingly institutionalized, both politically and in terms of their security apparatus.

These developments have been observed with hostility across the border in Turkey, perceiving a breakaway Kurdish state in Syria as a direct threat to its territorial integrity, and American backing of the SDF as an affront to their NATO ally.

Turkey has been ramping up the rhetoric on defeating the Kurdish forces, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stating at a conference for AK Party officials last week the need to “cleanse Afrin of the structure there called the YPG terrorist organization,” in reference to the Kurdish stronghold of Afrin, in Aleppo’s northern countryside. Troops have also been sent to the Idlib-Afrin border, and Monday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed there was an exchange of fire between Turkish and Kurdish fighters in the area.

In response, a Kurdish YPG militia accused Turkey of “aggression and escalation.”

Speaking to The Daily Star, Mustapha Bali, spokesperson for the SDF, said that they will “defend their themselves and their rights” from Turkish aggression and called for a return of their forces.

Christopher Kozak, senior Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., said Turkey has a multipronged strategy.

It will “support opposition groups [such as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army] on the ground with intelligence, arms and organization” that can militarily engage with the SDF, while simultaneously “hoping to sow discontent within the Kurdish ranks” and cause internal strife. The recent defection of Brig. Gen. Talal Silo, a senior SDF spokesman, exposes this particular vulnerability.

Washington must therefore weigh up the benefit of having the Kurds as a useful ally against Daesh and check on the Syrian regime and Iran, versus the cost involved in upsetting a valuable NATO ally and becoming too financially embroiled in the conflict.

In the immediate term, however, Michael Stephens from the Royal United Services Institute told The Daily Star that the U.S. is now trying to “speed up the amount of territory that the SDF will take ... by engaging in a massive rearmament phase.”

Yet in the longer term, “the Americans understand that frankly they need to be in this game for a while ... but they haven’t come up with a strategy, or any timelines,” he said, adding, “I’ve been in those meetings, I just don’t think we’re there yet, no one has really thought about how this would fit into a Geneva process and what dividing up Syria would look like.”

Nevertheless, it seems there is little appetite to support a breakaway state, with U.S. President Donald Trump recently issuing a joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month affirming his commitment to Syria’s “sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity.”

In an interview last year with state-owned ARA news agency, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed that “most Kurds want to live in a unified Syria, under a central system, not in a federal system,” and has previously stated that his fight in the country is not only against “terrorism,” but also against those who try to weaken or partition Syria. But, as Stephens pointed out, the Kurds have weapons, and a lot of them, and “the only thing that stops Assad taking more territory is people” who have a significant military arsenal.

The likes of Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem are therefore speaking about negotiation. In an interview with Russia Today in September, Moallem said the topic of Kurdish autonomy “is open to negotiation and discussion and when we are done eliminating Daesh, we can sit with our Kurdish sons and reach an understanding on a formula for the future.”

This position seems to be accepted from the Kurdish side.

For Bali, the SDF spokesperson, while the situation of governance cannot go back to the “one-party, iron-fist rule” pre-2011, they are “ready to negotiate with anyone, whether it is with the regime or opposition groups.” He said the opposition is “worse than the regime when it comes to accepting the need for redistribution of power and accepting a democratic federal system.”

It is within this context of all sides trying to second-guess the other that Russia sees an opportunity to spearhead diplomatic efforts.

“Russia wants to appear the honest broker,” Kozak told The Daily Star, and bring the Kurds into the fold, as evidenced by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s inclusion of the Kurds in the invitation to Russia’s proposed Syrian Congress on National Dialogue.

The Russians want to bring the Kurds onside, yet they will also “allow Turkey to engage in a certain level of military operations so that the Kurds feel a degree of threat.”

Unlike the U.S., the Russians have Assad’s ear, and so can present themselves as worth talking to. This ultimately sidelines the efforts of the Geneva process, and in Kozak’s view, will mean an ultimate “loss of American and coalition influence in Syria.”

This is the current context in which the Kurds must therefore operate. With their U.S. weapons, battle-hardened military forces, and promise of keeping the Daesh insurgency at bay, they have a strong hand. But they are also looking across at Iraq, Stephens argued, and understand “that their leverage was not as set in stone as maybe they thought it was,” referring to the Kurdish independence referendum that led to a crisis between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government.

The hand they will likely play is to emphasize their willingness to cooperate and negotiate on what a Kurdish state would look like. Crucially, if they exist within a wider Syrian structure, an attack from Turkey would represent an attack on Syrian sovereignty.

Speaking in general terms about Turkey’s involvement in the conflict, Bouthaina Shaaban, a senior adviser to Assad, told Al-Mayadeen TV that she considered Turkey “a colonizer country,” and its forces “illegal” – a sentiment the SDF can capitalize on.

Analysts believe the Kurds must convince the regime and its allies that they do not just represent the Kurdish population, but are inclusive.

In this vein, Bali said that the SDF “do not consider themselves a nationalist federation, because the DFNS is diverse and already includes Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen” and that the ultimate goal is “peace for all Syrians.”

Whether this will be reflected in their institutions is yet to be seen, but what they’ll be trying do now, Stephens argued, “is maintain the structure of Kurdishness but give it a Syrian face.”