Russia, Turkey reach deal to remove YPG from Syria border

ARK News: Syrian and Russian forces will deploy in northeast Syria to remove Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons from the border with Turkey under a deal agreed on Tuesday which both Moscow and Ankara hailed as a triumph.

Hours after the deal was announced, the Turkish defense ministry said that the United States had told Turkey the withdrawal of Kurdish militants was complete from the “safe zone” Ankara demands in northern Syria.

There was no need to initiate another operation outside the current area of operation at this stage, the ministry said in a statement, effectively ending its military offensive that had begun on Oct. 9, drawing widespread criticism.

The agreement follows a U.S.-brokered truce which expired on Tuesday and underlines the dizzying changes in Syria since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of American troops two weeks ago ahead of Turkey’s cross-border offensive against the Kurds.

The Russia-Turkey agreement struck in the Black Sea resort of Sochi endorses the return of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to the border alongside Russian troops, replacing the Americans who had patrolled the region for years with their former SDF allies.

Under the pact between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the two countries said Russian military police and Syrian border guards would start removing the YPG 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border on Wednesday.

Six days later, Russian and Turkish forces will jointly start to patrol a narrower, 10 km strip of land in the “safe zone” that Ankara has long sought in northeast Syria.

“We may well give the international community an opportunity to establish a safe zone between Turkey and the Kurdish population in Syria that will ensure peace and security,” Pence told a Heritage Foundation gala in Washington.

After six hours of talks with Erdogan in Sochi, Putin expressed satisfaction at decisions he described as “very important, if not momentous, to resolve what is a pretty tense situation which has developed on the Syrian-Turkish border”.

Under the deal with Moscow, the length of the border which the YPG would be required to pull back from is more than triple the size of the territory covered by the U.S.-Turkish accord, covering most of the area Turkey had wanted to include.

Some 300,000 people have been displaced by Turkey’s offensive and 120 civilians have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor. It said on Sunday 259 fighters with the Kurdish-led forces had been killed, and 196 Turkey-backed Syrian militias.

Pence received a letter from Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Kobani on Tuesday saying their forces had withdrawn “from the relevant area of operations” under that deal, Pence’s spokeswoman Katie Waldman said.

Turkey sought a “safe zone” along 440 km (275 miles) of the border with northeast Syria, but its assault focused on the two border towns in the center of that strip, Sari Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Gire Spi (Tal Abyad).

Syrian and Russian forces have already entered two border cities, Manbij and Kobani, which lie within Turkey’s planned “safe zone” but to the west of Turkey’s military operations.

Erdogan has said he could accept the presence of Syrian troops in those areas, as long as the YPG is pushed out.

Source: Reuters

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