MOSCOW - Russian officials say they expect Turkey to start halting soon its cross-border incursion in north-eastern Syria. They say Syria’s Kurds have agreed to shelve their plans for a self-governing state and Kurdish fighters will join Syrian forces patrolling the border.
The deal-making between Damascus and the Kurds started in earnest nearly a year ago when U.S. President Donald Trump first broached the idea of withdrawing U.S. troops from Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria, say officials who spoke on the condition they not be identified.
They pointed to one of the announced war aims of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on launching his cross-border offensive, formally known as Operation Peace Spring — to ensure Syria’s territorial integrity, code, the Russian officials say, for a Kurdish statelet not to emerge in northeast Syria. “We have been the oil in the negotiations,” a Russian official told VOA.
Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring last Wednesday to eliminate, it says, what it terms Kurdish terrorists from northern Syria in order to secure Turkey’s borders and aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees. Ankara has long viewed the Syrian Kurdish militia, allies of the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State militants, as an offshoot of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.
Last week Russian leader Vladimir Putin appeared to endorse Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria, but has drawn some red lines of his own including that the offensive, which has plunged 35 kilometers deep into Syria, doesn’t lead to any permanent occupation by the Turks of Syrian territory, according to both analysts and Russian officials.
In return for the Kremlin’s acceptance of the Turkish offensive, there’s also the expectation that Turkish President Erdogan will acquiesce with Moscow’s plans for Syria’s political future, one that will see President Bashar al-Assad, Russia’s ally, reclaim the whole of Syria.
Asked if Erdogan was coordinating the Turkish offensive with Putin, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said: “Contacts between the Russian and Turkish authorities are happening. In particular, there was a phone call (between the presidents), and phone conversations between the foreign ministers. There are also communication channels between the (two) militaries.”
Peskov declined to comment Monday when asked if Moscow felt it was time for Turkey to end its operation inside Syria. He added the Kremlin had already warned all parties in the Syrian conflict to avoid any action that could escalate tensions.
The Russian and Turkish leaders talked by phone last week as a prelude to Turkish warplanes launching waves of airstrikes on Syrian Kurdish border towns.
The Syrian Army entered the city of Manbij in the northern province of Aleppo late Sunday, according to local media reports. Syrian units are planning to reach the city of Kobani, about 60 kilometers away, within the next 48 hours.
Kobani was the scene of a heroic fightback by Syrian Kurdish forces, with U.S. air support, against Islamic State, whose militants besieged the town for five months in 2014 and 2015.
Most of the town was flattened and most of the population fled north to Turkey during vicious fighting, returning later to start reconstruction.
The Kurdish-led Self-Administration of North and East Syria issued an official statement on Sunday confirming the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, struck a deal with Damascus and Moscow after the U.S. announced it was withdrawing all remaining troops from Syria. The decision came five days after the Turks launched Operation Peace Spring with the backing of Syrian Arab militias drawn from rebel factions once focused on ousting Assad.
On Sunday, a Turkish airstrike killed 11 and injured over 70 when it hit a civilian convoy.
“The SDF has responded with dignity and courage resulting in the death and injury of its fighters, in order to save the Syrian integrity, however Turkey is continuing its assault.”
The statement added: “As a result, we had to deal with the Syrian government that has the duty of protecting the country’s borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty, so that the Syrian army can enter and deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to support the SDF to repel this aggression and liberate the areas entered by the Turkish army and its hired mercenaries.”