Senior Turkish military official denied that Turkey and the USA reached a “loose” agreement to stop fighting between Turkish forces and YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Daily Sabah reported.
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“We are waiting for the immediate realisation of the commitment the U.S. forwarded to us that there will not be any PYD/YPG elements in the west of Euphrates after the Manbij operation”, Tanju Bilgiç, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.
In launching Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkey said it had the backing and cooperation of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition, despite Ankara also saying it meant to clear the border area of Kurdish forces. A commander in one of the Turkish-backed Syrian rebel groups that have clashed with SDF-allied groups south of Jarablus also denied such a deal.
“These conflicting reports could be a further indication of mounting tension between Turkey and the USA about how to deal with northern Syria”, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said.
Earlier, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter (seen below) called on the Turkish government to stop attacking US-backed factions of Kurdish militants in Syria and to focus on attack against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
The U.S.is backing both Kurdish fighters and Turkey in the multilayered Syrian war, even as the two sides have exchanged fire inside northern Syria over the past three days.
Kurdish officials are saying that Syrian Kurdish fighters and the Turkish military have agreed on a temporary cease-fire in the volatile northern Syrian region, near the town of Jarablus.
The battle in northern Syria now pits USA ally Turkey against the Kurdish-led force – a US -backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS militants in Syria’s 5-year-old civil war.
The Kurdish-led forces “are shamelessly using the war in Syria to create a de facto terrorist state in Syria”, the spokesman wrote.
Turkey did not confirm it had agreed to hold fire, saying only that it would hold the USA to a commitment that the Kurdish PYD party and its YPG militia would retreat eastwards.
Both sides are backed by the U.S. in their fight against ISIL, but Turkey, a key North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, views the YPG as a threat because of its close links to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which has been fighting Turkish forces for the past three decades.
Turkey has suffered shock waves from the conflict raging in its southern neighbor, including bombings by ISIS, but it also wants to stop Kurdish forces gaining control of an unbroken swathe of Syrian territory on Turkey’s frontier, which it fears could embolden a Kurdish militant group that has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.
The Jarablus Military Council, which is backed by the SFD, said a truce had been reached with Turkey “via the United states and the global coalition”. In comments published Tuesday in the pro-government newspaper, Daily Sabah, Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin called on the U.S.to “revise their policy of supporting (the Kurdish-led force) at all costs”.
“The absolute urgency is a halt to fighting and a return to negotiations”, Hollande said.
A Kurdish military official said a ceasefire between Turkey and Kurdish-backed militia fighters was holding.
Turkey’s president vowed to press ahead with the military operation until IS and Kurdish Syrian fighters no longer pose a security threat to Ankara.
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Turkey, meanwhile, said it killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in strikes on Sunday.
