Yahoo News Fighting continues on Syria-Turkey border despite ceasefire
Fighting is continuing on the border between Syria and Turkey in defiance of a supposed five-day ceasefire negotiated between the US and Turkey.
Intermittent artillery fire and ground clashes were heard in the border town of Ras al-Ayn on Friday morning, one of the two main targets of the nine-day-old Turkish offensive, as the Turkish military and Syrian rebel proxies struggled to wrest control of the town from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Mike Pence, the US vice-president, and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, met the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in Ankara for hours of talks on Thursday afternoon, announcing afterwards that Turkey had agreed to suspend its operation in north-east Syria for 120 hours to allow the SDF to withdraw, potentially halting the latest bloodshed in Syria’s long war.
However, while the SDF commander, Mazloum Kobane, acknowledged the ceasefire, he said his fighters were ready to abide by it only in the border strip between Ras al-Ayn and Tel Abyad, the other town under Turkish attack.
Who is in control in north-eastern Syria?
Until Turkey launched its offensive there on 9 October, the region was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish.
Since the Turkish incursion, the SDF has lost much of its territory and appears to be losing its grip on key cities. On 13 October, Kurdish leaders agreed to allow Syrian regime forces to enter some cities to protect them from being captured by Turkey and its allies. The deal effectively hands over control of huge swathes of the region to Damascus.
That leaves north-eastern Syria divided between Syrian regime forces, Syrian opposition militia and their Turkish allies, and areas still held by the SDF – for now.
On 17 October Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed with US vice-president Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation for five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw.
How did the SDF come to control the region?
Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province.
In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobane, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers.
Why does Turkey oppose the Kurds?
For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey.
Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis.
What are Turkey’s objectives on its southern border?
Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region.
Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border.
How would a Turkish incursion impact on Isis?
Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria.
SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory.
On 11 October, it was reported that at least five detained Isis fighters had escaped a prison in the region. Two days later, 750 foreign women affiliated to Isis and their children managed to break out of a secure annex in the Ain Issa camp for displaced people, according to SDF officials.
It is unclear which detention sites the SDF still controls and the status of the prisoners inside.
The Syrian regime and its Russian allies, who have also moved troops into the contested border zone at the invitation of the SDF, and are not bound by the terms of the US-Turkish agreement, had no immediate comment.
Erdoğan told reporters in Istanbul on Friday he had confirmation that Kurdish fighters were withdrawing, dismissing reports of the ongoing clashes as “speculation, disinformation”. He said Turkish troops would remain in north-east Syria to monitor whether “this terror organisation [is] truly leaving the area”.
Donald Trump framed the US-brokered deal as “a great day for civilisation”, despite criticism that the agreement largely solidifies Turkey’s position and aims in the week-long conflict and conditionally removes the prospect of American sanctions on Turkey.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Texas on Thursday night, the US president appeared to embrace Turkey’s talking points on the operation, saying of the border: “They had to have it cleaned out [of Kurdish fighters].”
Likening the conflict to a playground fight, he added: “Sometimes you have to let them fight, like two kids in a lot, you got to let them fight and then you pull them apart.”
The EU council president, Donald Tusk, said the “so-called” ceasefire was in fact “a demand of capitulation of the Kurds”, while the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described Turkey’s incursion as “madness”. Macron added that he expected to meet Erdoğan alongside Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel in London in the coming weeks.
Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring, aimed at driving the SDF away from its border, on 9 October. The assault was triggered by Trump’s announcement that US troops would withdraw from the region, which removed the buffer that had stopped Turkey attacking the Kurdish-led force.
On Thursday it emerged that Trump had sent his Turkish counterpart a bizarre letter warning him “don’t be a fool” and saying history risked branding him a “devil” . Erdoğan responded on Friday by saying his country “cannot forget” the letter but that the mutual “love and respect” between the two leaders prevented him from keeping it on Turkey’s agenda.
Ankara maintains the SDF is indistinguishable from Turkey’s outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) and has long been angered by US support for the group during the five-year-long campaign to defeat Islamic State.
The offensive has been widely condemned for triggering a humanitarian crisis and risking the re-emergence of Isis amid the chaos. At least 300,000 people have fled their homes in the fighting and at least 71 people have been killed in north-east Syria, according to the UN and a human rights monitor. Over the border in Turkey, 20 civilians have been killed in counterattacks.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said on Friday that it was gathering information following accusations that burning white phosphorus had been used by Turkish forces against children in Syria earlier this week. The killing of nine Kurdish civilians on a major highway by Syrian rebel proxies has also prompted allegations of war crimes from Amnesty International.
A statement released by Washington and Ankara after the ceasefire talks did not define any changes to the size and scope of Turkey’s proposed safe zone, which Turkish officials have previously said should be 20 miles (32km) deep and stretch 270 miles from the contested town of Manbij to the Iraqi border.
The statement also reiterated the US understanding of Turkey’s need for a safe zone, which would be “primarily enforced by the Turkish armed forces” after the Kurdish withdrawal, implying that Ankara still intends to occupy the entire area.
Kurdish military leaders and politicians have repeatedly rejected the Turkish plan, which would encompass major Kurdish towns and parts of the main highway.
“Our people did not want this war. We welcome the ceasefire, but we will defend ourselves in the event of any attack … Ceasefire is one thing and surrender is another thing, and we are ready to defend ourselves. We will not accept the occupation of northern Syria,” the Kurdish political leader Saleh Muslim told local television.
Erdoğan is due to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Sochi on Tuesday, where it is expected further concrete talks on the size of Turkey’s planned buffer zone will take place.
