ANSD : Russia tells Turkey YPG has left Syria strip

SUN 24 - 11 - 2024

Date: Oct 30, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

Russia tells Turkey YPG has left Syria strip

_Reuters
MOSCOW/ANKARA: Russia has informed Turkey that Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters have withdrawn from a strip of land near the Syrian-Turkish border within a deadline set by Ankara and Moscow, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday. Under an accord clinched by Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin a week ago, Syrian border guards and Russian military police were meant to clear all YPG forces and their weapons from a 30 kilometer “safe zone” south of the border by 6 p.m. local time (15:00 GMT) Tuesday.

In the next phase of the plan, Russian and Turkish forces are due to conduct joint patrols of a narrower, 10 kilometer strip of land on the Syrian side of the border. Bilateral talks on how those patrols will work are continuing, Erdogan said.

“Russia has conveyed to our relevant authorities that terrorist organizations have fully withdrawn from [the border area],” Erdogan said in a speech at a celebration in Ankara marking the anniversary of the Turkish Republic. “Of course, our talks [with Russia] will continue tomorrow as before,” he added.

Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the YPG had completed its withdrawal ahead of the deadline, but a top aide to Erdogan said Turkey would now see through its planned joint patrols with Russia whether the militia had truly left.

The Putin-Erdogan deal, clinched in the Russian Black Sea town of Sochi, reinforced an existing U.S.-brokered cease-fire that had halted Turkey’s offensive in northeast Syria targeting the YPG, which Ankara views as a terrorist organization because of its links to Kurdish insurgents in southeast Turkey.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, citing Maj. Gen. Yuri Borenkov, a senior military official working on Syria, said 68 Kurdish defense units comprising 34,000 people had left the “safe zone” with their weapons and equipment by the deadline. He also said the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad - a close ally of Moscow - had set up 84 border outposts on the Syrian-Turkish border.

A Russian delegation is currently in Turkey for talks on how the patrols will work and on the wider security situation in northeast Syria. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said the delegation held a second day of talks Tuesday, without saying whether the two countries had yet agreed how to carry out the patrols.

“Joint patrols will start soon,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Tuesday evening.

In an interview in Tuesday’s edition of the Sabah newspaper, Akar had complained that some Kurdish YPG forces remained in the area of the Turkish-Syrian border.

Akar also said there were still around 1,000 YPG fighters in the border town of Manbij and a further 1,000 in nearby Tal Rifaat.

The two towns are to the west of the strip of territory that Turkey wants to turn into a “safe zone” but Syrian and Russian forces are also meant to clear them of YPG forces.

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