Dealing with Turkey

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has agreed with the US vice-president, Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation on Kurdish-led forces in north-east Syria for the next five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw, potentially halting the latest bloodshed in Syria’s long war.

“It will be a pause for 120 hours while the US oversees the withdrawal of the YPG [a Kurdish unit within the SDF] … Once that is completed, Turkey has agreed to a permanent ceasefire,” Pence said, adding that preparations were already underway.

[...]

The arrangement, however, appeared to be a significant US embrace of Turkey’s position in the weeklong conflict, and did not publicly define the safe zone’s borders.

General Mazloum Kobane of the SDF confirmed the ceasefire deal in comments to local television on Thursday night, but said it only applied to the area between the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, both of which have seen heavy fighting.

Damascus and Moscow, who have since also moved troops into the contested border zone, also had no immediate comment. Erdoğan is due to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Sochi on Tuesday, where it is expected more concrete talks on the size of Turkey’s planned buffer zone will take place.

[...]

When asked, Pence remained silent on whether the agreement amounted to a second abandonment of the US’s former Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State.

[...]

A statement released after the meeting reiterated the US understanding of Turkey’s need for a safe zone which will be “primarily enforced by the Turkish Armed Forces” after the Kurdish withdrawal, implying that Ankara still intends to occupy the 270m (440km) stretch of land, which includes several important Kurdish towns and parts of a major highway.

[...]

The initial plan was met with scepticism by many Syrian Kurds on Thursday night, as it gives the Turks what they had sought to achieve with the military operation in the first place: removal of Kurdish-led forces from the border.

[...]

It also made no mention of the presence of Syrian government and Russian troops, who were invited to the area by the SDF to help defend against the Turkish attack, and are not bound by the terms of the US-Turkish agreement.

  Guardian

Wow. What a deal Pence got.

“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.

“We’ve previously stated that Turkey’s proposal of entering a depth of 30km inside Syrian territories is rejected,” Aldar Xelil, another senior political figure, was quoted by local media as saying after news of the Ankara agreement broke.

In Ras al-Ayn, one of the two border towns under attack by Turkey, warplanes and drones were still flying overhead and ground fighting between the SDF and Syrian rebels allied to Turkey continued.

That's some cease fire.



Meanwhile, over in Trumpland...



Completely delusional.

But all that matters is that his minions believe it. And they will.

UPDATE: