Syrian government says U.S.-Turkish deal is an attack on Syria
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Damascus, Syria, April 6, 2017. Photo: SANA/Reuters
BEIRUT,— The Syrian government said on Thursday that an agreement between Turkey and the United States over Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), northeastern Syria, represented a “blatant attack” on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial unity and a “dangerous escalation”.
The agreement setting up a joint operation centre to manage a strip of territory at the Turkish border showed “American-Turkish partnership in the aggression against Syria”, state news agency SANA cited a foreign ministry source as saying.
The U.S.-Turkish “aggression” represented “a dangerous escalation and a threat to peace and stability in the area”.
The U.S. and Turkey gave few details of the deal, which followed three days of talks between military delegations and months of stalemate over how far the safe zone should extend into Syria and who should command forces patrolling it.
Washington has proposed a two-tier safe zone, with a 5-kilometer (3-mile) demilitarized strip bolstered by an additional 9 km (5.6 miles) cleared of heavy weapons – stretching in total less than half the distance into Syria that Turkey is seeking.
Turkey has also said it must have ultimate authority over the zone, another point of divergence with the United States.
Three Turkish officials who spoke to Reuters this week had expressed impatience over the talks and warned that Ankara was ready to act on its own.
A top Syrian Kurdish official told Reuters on Wednesday that any Turkish attack on Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria would spark a “big war”.
Across the frontier, the Kurds initially rejected any Turkish presence in a buffer zone inside Syria, demanding international monitors instead.
But on Thursday a top Syrian Kurdish official gave a guarded welcome Thursday to a US-Turkish agreement to establish a joint operations centre for the north but said the details remained unclear.
“This deal may mark the start of a new approach but we still need more details,” Aldar Khalil told AFP.
He said on Monday they were prepared to be flexible. Aldar Khalil told AFP they had agreed to a buffer zone of around five kilometres wide, but Turkey rejected the proposal. “It wants to control the area all on its own,” he said.
Syrian Kurdish forces have played a key role in the US-backed fight against the Islamic State group.
The Kurdish YPG forces expelled the Islamic State group from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
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 authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.
The Kurdish 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 SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
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