Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) speaks during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia October 22, 2019. Photo: Sputnik/Kremlin via Reuters
SOCHI, Russia,— Turkey and Russia agreed on Tuesday to remove the Syrian Kurdish YPG forces to beyond 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border, after which their troops will jointly patrol a narrower strip of land in a “safe zone” Ankara has long sought in Syrian Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in northern Syria.
Beginning at noon (0900 GMT) on Wednesday, Russian military police and Syrian border guards will move in to facilitate the removal of Kurdish YPG members and weapons to beyond the zone in a mission that should take about six days, according to the deal.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed the deal as one that would end the bloodshed in the region, while Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had no designs on Syrian territory as it continued to push the YPG south.
The YPG, the key component in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that have for years fought alongside U.S. troops against Islamic State, will also leave the towns of Tel Rifaat and Manbij under the deal struck between Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The Kurdish SDF, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region. have been a key ally of the United States in the battle against Islamic State group in Syria.
Ankara regards the YPG as “terrorists” because of their ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is waging an insurgency in Turkish Kurdistan in southeast of the country.
Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone in Syrian soil along the length of its southern frontier to keep Kurdish forces at bay.
“The main aim of the operation is to take out YPG terror organizations from the area and to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees,” Erdogan told a joint news conference with Putin.
“This operation also guarantees Syria’s territorial integrity and political unity… We never had any interest in Syria’s land and sovereignty,” Erdogan added.
Once the YPG are removed, Turkish and Russian troops will conduct joint patrols in northern Syria within 10 km of the border, according to the deal.
Erdogan added that Ankara would also work with Moscow for the safe return of Syrian refugees now in Turkey.
Turkey and its Syrian Islamist proxies on October 9, 2019 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, after an announced US military pullout.
Under a US-brokered truce deal announced last week, the Kurds have until late Tuesday to pull out their fighters from a 120-kilometre (70-mile) long strip along the frontier that it has largely overrun during the operation.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of local and foreign fighters suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
Refugee returns
Russia is a key ally of Assad and has demanded that Turkey respect the country’s territorial integrity.
As the US troops began to withdraw last week, Russian forces moved in to support the Syrian army, whose help against Turkey was requested by the Kurds.
Erdogan said last week he was not bothered by the Damascus regime’s return as what mattered to Ankara was pushing back the Kurdish fighters from the safe zone.
Despite being on the opposite sides of the Syria conflict, Turkey and Russia have been working together to find a solution to the war.
Tuesday’s agreement said the two countries would try “to find a lasting political solution to the Syrian conflict”.
It said Russia and Turkey were determined “to combat terrorism in all forms… and to disrupt separatist agendas in Syrian territory”.
The agreement said efforts would also be launched for the return of refugees to Syria “in a safe and voluntary manner”.
Ankara has said some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey can be rehoused inside the safe zone.
But the Kurds argue that Turkey’s goal is to weaken the Kurdish presence in Syrian Kurdistan by modifying the demographics of the area with the return of mostly Sunni Arab refugees.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP