To the northeast of the Mediterranean Sea lies the countries now known as Turkey and Syria. These two countries have recently taken the world stage once again with a development in the civil war that has been raging in Syria for a decade. Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor, has launched a military invasion dubbed ‘Operation Peace Spring’ along the northeastern section of the border. Although the extremist-based violence in the region has waned significantly in recent months, this invasion on behalf of Turkey has created new issues in the already fractured country of Syria, and has international ramifications.

 

The Kurds are a population group native to the areas today known as southern Turkey, northern Syria, and parts of Iraq and Armenia. After World War 1, the Kurds hoped to create a homeland of Kurdistan, but these dreams were destroyed when Ataturk, the president of Turkey at the time, forced the Allied Powers to expand Turkey’s borders. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, the Kurds established a self-governing region in north-eastern Syria known as Rojava. The US made an alliance with the Kurds against the terrorist group known as Islamic State (IS). With US support, this Kurdish territory gained more land. Kurds allied with non-Kurds to create the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The alliance with the US was ended on October 11, 2019, when US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw support from Rojava.

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This multifaceted power struggle has now become even more complex and has proven to have increased the danger of an already deadly war.

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About the Security Council

 

The establishment of the security council as one of the six main organs in the United Nations Charter assigned it the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Among the responsibilities of the Security Council (SC) and the United Nations (UN), there are four essential purposes; to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights; and to be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations. Due to the important responsibility delegated to this Organ, all the 193 UN’s members agree to accept and execute the resolutions of this Council. Other committees can only make recommendations to other nations, but this organ holds the authority to make decisions that member states are obligated to implement as Article 25 of the UN Charter states, “The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”

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