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Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli has issued a stark warning: if the SDF fails to implement the March 10 agreement it signed with Damascus, a joint Turkish-Syrian military intervention will become inevitable.
His words represent more than partisan rhetoric; they mark the entrance of Turkish nationalists into the debate over Syria’s future with a clear message—patience has run out.
In my earlier column, "Why is Türkiye flexing its muscles in Syria?", I argued that Ankara’s military posturing intended to push the SDF back toward the March 10 agreement after it began stalling under Israeli encouragement. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's sharp message that "playing for time" would not serve the SDF was meant as a final warning. Yet, as I earlier wrote in "What’s SDF’s stalling game in Syria?", the group continued to waste time, hiding behind conferences and recycled tactics. Both Ankara and Damascus voiced growing frustration, yet they still stopped short of openly endorsing the military option.
Bahceli's intervention changes that calculus. His recent remarks draw a direct line from the historic call he made years ago—urging PKK disarmament under the terrorist group's imprisoned ringleader Abdullah Ocalan—to today's situation. Back then, Bahceli framed disarmament as necessary to deny Israel's threat to Türkiye. Now, he again invokes Israel’s role, portraying the SDF as instruments of an Israeli plan to fragment Syria.
In this framing, insisting on the March 10 deal is not only about Syrian unity but also about resisting an external threat. Bahceli created a dichotomy between the PKK members who are loyal to Ocalan and those he views as Israeli proxies, casting the SDF toward the second camp.
For the first time, the nationalist camp is no longer hedging between negotiation and deterrence. Bahceli has made the binary explicit: either the SDF integrates into the Syrian state structure as agreed, or it faces a joint military force.
The significance of Bahceli’s warning lies in its political weight. The SDF had long believed that the process in Türkiye would shield it from Turkish military intervention, and this assumption shaped its hardened stance in talks with Damascus.
Now, the exact figure who once kickstarted the PKK disarmament process by giving Ocalan the option to take an initiative is signaling that a military option may be inevitable. Faced with this reversal, the SDF may—hopefully—be forced to correct its misperception about Türkiye's process, recalibrate its bargaining position, and finally implement the March 10 deal.
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