Turkish Incursion into Northern Syria

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Turkey and Syria.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and thank him for raising this issue in the House. I can tell him, and all Members, that on 9 October, following the US announcement that it would withdraw its troops from the region, Turkey launched a military operation in north-east Syria. Turkish troops have pushed into northern Syrian towns and villages, clashing with Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 125 miles. The UN estimates that at least 160,000 people have been displaced in less than a week.

From the outset, the UK Government have warned Turkey against taking this military action. As we feared, it has seriously undermined the stability and security of the region. It risks worsening the humanitarian crisis and increasing the suffering of millions of refugees, and it also undermines the international effort that should be focused on defeating Daesh. On Thursday 10 October, I spoke to the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and expressed the UK’s grave concerns. On Saturday 12 October, the Prime Minister spoke to President Erdoğan to reinforce those concerns and urge restraint. I addressed the issue at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly on Saturday. Yesterday, the EU released a statement, which we joined, condemning Turkey’s unilateral military action and calling on it to withdraw its forces.

The UK Government take their arms export control responsibilities very seriously. In this case, we will of course keep our defence exports to Turkey under careful and continual review. I can tell the House that no further export licences to Turkey for items that might be used in military operations in Syria will be granted while we conduct that review. Yesterday, as Members will know, the US signed an Executive order to impose limited sanctions on Turkey, including against senior members of Turkey’s Government. The EU considered this and, on balance, decided against sanctions at this stage; however, we will keep the position under careful review.

As we condemn this military intervention, it is only right that we also recognise some of the legitimate concerns that Turkey has—

What legitimate concerns?

I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, if he is willing to listen.

It is only right that we recognise some of Turkey’s legitimate concerns in relation to the 3.6 million refugees that it has taken from Syria, and its concerns about the threat to its security from the PKK at its southern border with Syria. For decades, Turkey has been a staunch ally in NATO and one of the largest contributors of military personnel. With close partners, we must at times be candid and clear. This is not the action that we expected from an ally. It is reckless and counterproductive, and it plays straight into the hands of Russia and, indeed, the Assad regime, so the UK Government call on Turkey to exercise maximum restraint and to bring an end to this unilateral military action. I commend this statement to the House.

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing further pursuit of this important issue, and I thank the Secretary of State for his response.

In just a week, we have seen the map of north-east Syria redrawn, following the ill-thought-through foreign policy change by President Trump that has triggered a tragic series of events that are now undermining international efforts to contain Daesh. It has forced a counter-Daesh ally, the Syrian Democratic Forces, to resort to asking the Assad regime for help, giving Russia and Iran ever greater leverage in determining Syria’s future, while simultaneously diminishing any remaining influence the west can claim to have over the country’s future. In the fog of confusion, thousands of hard-line jihadist fighters are now able to escape and regroup to fight another day. If Turkey’s safe zone is allowed to go ahead, 3 million Sunni Arab refugees will soon be moved there, fundamentally changing the ethnic make-up of north-east Syria. As so often in conflict, tens of thousands of displaced civilians are attempting to flee the fighting, with many killed and injured.

Direct conflict between Syria and Turkey is now just another notch closer, so I request that Britain steps forward with increased determination to help to resolve this unfolding crisis. I have the following questions for the Secretary of State. What discussions has he had with his US counterparts to invite them to re-engage with the international community on the future of Syria? They cannot back out of their international responsibilities. Does he agree that membership of NATO comes with responsibilities? Will Turkey’s actions be reviewed with our NATO allies? Has he spoken with his French and German counterparts to better co-ordinate a European response in relation to any sanctions and, indeed, further arms embargoes? What efforts can be made to seek a UN Security Council response to these unfolding events? Will he concede that we need to address the absence of any legal convention to process IS fighters, including family members, as well as orphans? Let us give the United States their due: they are actually taking back orphans from that region, and we should do the same.

I share many of my right hon. Friend’s concerns, which he expressed both eloquently and powerfully. He made the point about the destabilisation of the region, which is absolutely right. Like him, I am concerned that this takes our eye off the ball when it comes to the overriding focus that we should have in counter-terrorism terms on Daesh. It is also set to make the humanitarian situation worse.

My right hon. Friend made a number of other specific points, which I will try to address in turn. We will not recognise any demographic change that is brought about as a result of this incursion. I have been very clear with the Turkish Foreign Minister that any returns must be safe and voluntary. We are also engaged with all our partners—the US and the EU—as my right hon. Friend asked, and he will be aware that the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday adopted conclusions that condemned the Turkish military action for all the reasons that he has raised and that I have made clear. He has also called for a genuine political transition, in line with the Security Council resolutions and the 2012 Geneva communiqué, to be negotiated by the parties within the UN-led Geneva process. Given one of the other points he made, I think that it is worth pointing out the continued efforts of the international community, including at the UN Security Council, to stop this military unilateral action, which we agree is urgently required.

I thank both you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question and the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) for securing it. As he and I and many other colleagues warned last week, the situation in northern Syria has gone from bad to worse to utterly catastrophic and horrifying since the Trump Administration withdrew their troops and gave a green light to Turkey to invade. As we have seen, it is not just Turkey’s airstrikes and artillery barrage that have caused the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians, but the barbaric actions of the jihadi death squads, armed and supported by Turkey, which are now freely operating inside Rojava. May I ask the Minister whether, as part of the Government’s welcome review of arms sales to Turkey, which I believe is worth £1.1 billion, they will look specifically at whether any of the arms that our country has supplied to Turkey have ended up in the hands of the jihadi militants?

It is clear to anyone with any understanding of the situation in Syria that if the Kurds did not have the support of the US and faced another Turkish invasion, they would be driven reluctantly into the hands of Assad and Russia simply for their own protection, and, sadly, that has proved correct. Was the Foreign Office in any way surprised at what has recently happened? Yet again, it prompts the question, which I hope the Secretary of State will answer today, about the Government’s strategy on Syria. It seems likely that responsibility for tackling the Daesh remnants, escapees, and sleeper cells will fall, not to the coalition, but to the Kurds and the Assad regime between them. It seems likely that the Kurds will be brought into the constitutional reform committee, and that once the other areas are stabilised, there will be a merciless assault on the areas of Idlib held by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, at which point the war will effectively be over. Again, I ask the Secretary of State: what is the Government’s strategy? Was he surprised when the Defence Secretary seemed to be a dog in the manger on the word “condemn” yesterday at the NATO summit? Was he concerned that The Times reported his comments as ones that seem to be giving support to the Turkish action, and will he make it clear that we certainly do not support the Turkish action? Finally, may I ask him this very specific question: before Donald Trump took his catastrophic decision to withdraw US troops from Rojava, did he inform the British Government?

Let me say at the outset that we share the right hon. Lady’s concerns about the worsening humanitarian situation, about the impact that the Turkish intervention has on stability and about the terrorism threat on the ground and more generally. She asks about the export regime. She will know that we have one of the most rigorous and robust export licence regimes in the world, but we keep it under constant review and will continue to do so—particularly in relation to this instance—in the way in which I have described.

The situation on the ground has been very fluid, but we are deeply disappointed with Turkey’s decision. The right hon. Lady asks what we need to do now. Well, we now need—more than ever—to have closer co-operation between our international partners, and that means the US and the EU. We do not accept the frankly inaccurate characterisation of the UK’s position in Monday’s EU Foreign Affairs Council. We work with our partners. There were different views, but we always want to ensure that we take a balanced approach, as our EU partners did. The most important things are the conclusions that were agreed, and which I have set out at some length.

The situation also shows that we need NATO now more than ever. I gently say to the right hon. Lady that that is one of the reasons that it is so irresponsible that the leader of the Labour party has called for us to come out of NATO.

No, no, no—take that back!

No; that is well known. We need to be strengthening NATO, not weakening it, as well as working very closely with our UN partners and agencies.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). Does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State know of any other policy decision by any ally that has so exposed our troops in combat, weakened our alliances in the region, undermined our essential security partnership in NATO and empowered our enemies in Russia and Iran? Will he perhaps also tell me what he will be doing to ensure that the UK invests more fully in our own defence and security to support the multinational alliances that keep us safe and extend the security that our people rely on around the world?

My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, raises a number of good points. No, I cannot think of an occasion when such a close NATO ally has behaved in such a way. It raises concerns about the humanitarian situation and the counter-terrorism situation. My hon. Friend is also right to point out that it is all the more reason—an impetus—for us to invest in our military. We are one of leading members of NATO that are committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence, and we are committed to investing; and he will have heard the Chancellor’s comments on future investment. We also need to recommit and reinvigorate the NATO alliance because it is not clear to anyone—at least on the Government Benches—what would replace it.

I am not the Leader of the Opposition’s biggest fan, but I think that cheap pot shots at a time like this are utterly unnecessary and demean the office of Foreign Secretary.

This is a brutal and unnecessary conflict. There is a needless humanitarian catastrophe and a refugee crisis, which the Foreign Secretary rightly pointed out, but which has been made much worse. As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee rightly says, this will have a deep impact on our future ability to build alliances, and alliances that we need—not least given the boots on the ground that the SDF provided.

The Defence Secretary has said that

“Turkey needs to do what it sometimes has to do to defend itself”.

Maybe the Foreign Secretary can tell us exactly what that means.

The Secretary of State mentioned keeping sales of arms under careful review. We have seen how well that has gone in Yemen over the past three years. The UK has leverage here. Why have Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland and the Czech Republic stopped arms sales, and not the UK?

Finally, will the UK take its responsibilities seriously? We should all pay credit to the bravery of the humanitarian organisations and journalists such as Quentin Sommerville, who discovered in Syria British orphans of parents who had joined IS; surely children do not carry the sins of their parents.

I thank the hon. Gentleman. We share his concern, which I think is shared across the House, in relation to refugees. It is clear that the humanitarian situation will be compounded, not made any better, by Turkey’s intervention, which also has much broader implications for stability. He is wrong in his comments about export licences. Exports of military arms to Turkey that might be used in this operation have been suspended subject to the review that will take place. In relation to unaccompanied minors or orphans, assuming that they would represent no security threat, that is something—[Interruption.] Of course, but the age of minors goes right the way up to close to 18. We would be willing to see them returned home if that can be done in a safe way given the situation on the ground.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) for his question and support him in his comments. The UN estimates that there are some 1.6 million people in need in that area of north-east Syria, and since this started this week, a further 200,000 are on the move. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend consulted the Secretary of State for International Development. In other places where the Assad regime has taken back control of an area, access to humanitarian agencies has declined and information about circumstances has become almost impossible to get. It is absolutely essential that this does not happen in future. Will the British Government make sure that that is the case?

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has a lot of experience in this. I pay tribute to the work he did at the Foreign Office. I have spoken to the Secretary of State for International Development. We will be engaged, and we are already engaged, very closely with the UN agencies and the non-governmental organisations on the ground. The concern that he raised is absolutely spot on. We share it and we are doing everything we can to alleviate it.

There can be no doubt that it was the sudden announcement by the US Administration of a decision to withdraw their troops that has led to what Turkey has done, yet we discover that the United States is now imposing sanctions on Turkish Ministries and senior Government officials. The Foreign Secretary said that we need to be clear and candid with our allies, and I appreciate what he has said to the Government of Turkey about what they are doing, but could I encourage him to be equally clear and candid with the US Administration, whose policy at the moment, frankly, has perplexed their allies and friends and is making a bad situation much more dangerous?

I thank the Chair of the Brexit Committee. I would share many of his concerns in relation to this. The key point right now is to be working with our allies right across the transatlantic spectrum, with NATO, the US and our European friends, to try to exercise maximum restraint and maximum leverage on Turkey. Both in this case and more generally—because we will see a whole range of threats posed to this transatlantic alliance—we need to work out that some of the differences between us pale into insignificance compared with the challenges and the threats we face. This is one such example. We must redouble our efforts to cement the NATO alliance and work together collaboratively.