On Wednesday, the YPG denounced the Turkish military offensive in Syria as “a hostile intervention”, refusing to cave in to pressure coming from Turkey.
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But Ankara’s objective went beyond fighting extremists.
Before the Turkish deployment into Syria, retired Turkish Brigadier General Haldun Solmazturk, a veteran of the PKK conflict, said any operation against the YPG risked reprisals in Turkey.
That statement refers to an apparently separate pullout from the withdrawal that Turkey is seeking from the Kurdish forces. “Erdogan is a hard character with objectives in Turkey that in many cases remain quite at odds with USA interests”, he says.
The assault hit a YPG unit near the north of Manbij, another Syrian town controlled by the USA -allied YPG, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The officials expressed on several occasions their frustration with the discrepancy between the apparent willingness of the Turkish government to send troops into Syria and the reluctance of the Turkish military to endorse the plan. The problem is that it is just the Syrian version of a specific Kurdish organization, the PKK, which is attacking Turkish soldiers and bombing Turkish targets nearly every day.
The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) withdrew from the city of Manbij on Thursday, handing control over to the local military council, but the status of other members of the SDF was unclear.
The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish government regulations.
Syrian Kurdish officials contacted by The Associated Press would not confirm or deny that their forces were withdrawing east. The move did occur, but the YPG claimed that its forces had achieved their goals in the northern Syrian city of Manbij (40km south of Jarabulus), and were returning to their bases (New York Times, Hurriyet Daily News).
Jarabulus is located five kilometers (three miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkey’s determination to intervene in Syria now also appears to have been fueled by the expanding territorial ambitions of Syria’s Kurds, who have taken advantage of the support they have received from the US military for the fight against the Islamic State to consolidate their control over a newly emerging Kurdish region in northern Syria. Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria was also meant to contain an expansion by Syria’s Kurds. On balance, however, Washington has little choice but to embrace Ankara, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, over a controversial militia that is Turkey’s enemy.
Isik said the retreat was not yet complete and that Washington had given assurances that this would happen in the next week.
Turkey’s defense minister, Fikri Isik, said Thursday that Turkish forces were securing the area around Jarablus.
“No one has the right to ask the YPG to leave the area”, he adds.
He said Turkey and the US have agreed that the Syrian Kurdish forces would pull out of the northern area around Jarablus within a week.
He says that “for now, the withdrawal hasn’t fully taken place. We are waiting for it and following it”, he told the private NTV television station.
A spokesman for the US-led coalition against Isis tweeted that the “main element” of the Syrian Kurdish forces had already moved east although some remained for clean-up operations.
The call came despite Kurdish forces’ effectiveness in fighting ISIS on the western side of the river.
Before talks can begin, though, USA officials say it is imperative that Russian Federation use its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad to halt attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by what has become a largely ignored truce. “We are syncing up with the Turks”, one senior United States official told the Wall Street Journal. “What we can expect is they will continue to liberate areas where they can in preparation ultimately for the larger liberation battle at Raqqa”, said Colonel John Dorrian, the spokesman.
“We have a joint interest in discouraging such things from happening”, he told reporters.
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El Deeb reported from Beirut.
