The last few years have seen several Turkish military operations in northern Syria in an effort to stamp out the YPG. The group is a concern for Turkey because it is an offshoot of the PKK, also listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The YPG has received major American support and thus has become an unfortunate point of contention between NATO’s two largest militaries – Turkey and the U.S. The mainstream media misperceives Turkey’s counterterrorism offensives against the PKK-YPG as efforts against the Kurdish people themselves, and this perception does not reflect the complex reality of the situation.

The YPG issue has made NATO seem disjointed and played into Russia's hands, most significantly with Turkey’s ongoing opposition to Swedish and Finnish admission into the alliance. There exist major opportunities for strengthened Western cooperation with Turkey in the midst of these diplomatic tensions, and these opportunities must be seized to send a powerful message of unity to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The way forward is not simple and it will present challenges, but a stronger NATO is possible if all parties involved believe in the possibility of a more successful alliance. If Turkey and its Western partners communicate sincerely with the willingness to sacrifice, this spat can turn into a major victory for NATO and all of its current and future members.

Simply put, the PKK is a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. The group, which procures its funds from drug and human trafficking, is not representative of the Kurdish people as claimed by some Western politicians or media.

Analysts sometimes fail to understand President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan because they cannot grasp the fact that Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) foundations are radically different from Kemalism, under which Kurds faced discrimination. The AK Party’s founding philosophy, which emphasized empowering Turkey’s diverse social identities, primarily of people of faith, allowed it to make major strides in granting Kurdish people their rights because it was not hindered by the discriminative baggage of other parties like the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). The AK Party has been able to make the most significant pro-Kurdish reforms in Turkish history, including allowing Kurdish public broadcaster channels, radio stations and Kurdish language departments at universities.

In 2019 when former U.S. President Donald Trump decided to withdraw troops from Syria and allow Turkey’s operations, there were claims that Ankara had desires to ethnically cleanse northern Syria. However, such ethno-nationalist attitudes have not been part of the AK Party ideology. Following Trump’s controversial decision, the American national security community showed outrage over the betrayal of their alliance with the YPG. The concern of American officials and experts over the damage done to America’s credibility with non-state actor allies was justified, but the reality is that the U.S. walked itself into the situation. U.S. officials were more than aware of the YPG’s close ties to the PKK, and although the U.S. did damage its credibility by leaving the YPG open to the Turkish military, a potential clash of U.S. and Turkish troops would be far worse for U.S. interests considering the would-be damage to NATO’s credibility.

U.S. strategists should have been able to foresee the fact that an alliance with the YPG could only ever be short-lived because of its ties to the PKK, and the damage done to American credibility in the Middle East could have been foreseen.

U.S. cooperation with the YPG was undoubtedly a failure on the part of the U.S. to weigh its strategic priorities correctly while acting hastily due to the rapidly emerging Daesh threat. With the miscalculated regional policy, the U.S. became carried away from its greater strategic goal of maintaining the global order and holding down potential competitor superpowers. The consequences of NATO appearing disjointed, as Putin wants to believe, are now showing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As critical as defeating Daesh was, the U.S. strategy to attain this goal should not have outweighed its strategic priority of maintaining the integrity of NATO and signaling to the Russians that NATO could be ready to respond in unison should it continue to transgress and undermine NATO and the norms-based regime. The U.S., being the primary defender of the YPG, also easily had enough leverage over the YPG to prevent it from coalescing into a quasi-state and becoming such a threat to Turkey. Had Trump been more cognizant of the incredible amount of leverage he had over the U.S.-dependent YPG, it’s likely that this issue could have been resolved without as much strife.

We now see the YPG issue is deepening NATO’s wounds, as Turkey is concerned over its own security given that prospective NATO members Sweden and Finland have also supported the YPG in several capacities. We see here how the YPG issue has deeply hurt the U.S. and NATO interests.

In all of the tension between Turkey and NATO, however, there exists a major opportunity that must be capitalized on if NATO members are serious about having a strong alliance that can balance Russian aggression. The last several years have seen major disunity within NATO over Turkey, and the YPG issue has caused so much division between the U.S. and Turkey, among other major tensions like Turkey purchasing Russian S-400s and the U.S. refusing Turkey from its F-35 program.

All of this has undoubtedly played into Putin’s goal of showing the West as weak and expanding his geostrategic influence. Most convenient now for Putin is certainly the position that Turkey has had to take over Sweden and Finland, as the two Nordic countries breaking their historic neutrality would be a major strategic win for NATO and the West. A major opportunity for NATO exists if Sweden and Finland become cognizant of Turkey’s security concerns, and cutting ties with the YPG will necessarily facilitate increased security cooperation between Turkey and its NATO partners.

The best-case scenario, a positive response to Turkey’s concerns followed by the admission of the two prospective states into NATO, will reveal that NATO countries do indeed prioritize strategic NATO goals over their individual interests, making Putin think twice about the logic of his invasion of Ukraine and other transgressions.