TURKEY

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THE WASHINGTON POST

"Turkey launches offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria"


Kareem Fahim, Sarah Dadouch, Asser Khattab

9 OCTOBER 2019

ISTANBUL —Turkey’s government launched a long-expected offensive into northeastern Syria on Wednesday, with airstrikes and shelling targeting Syrian Kurdish fighters who have played a central role in aiding the U.S.-led battle against the Islamic State militant group.

The operation — with some ground forces crossing the border later — came just days after President Trump’s startling announcement that the United States would not stand in Turkey’s way, bringing sharp rebukes from even the president’s Republican allies.

The Turkish foray threatened to further fracture a war-shattered Syria as Ankara moved to create a “safe zone” after failing to agree on its size and nature during negotiations with the United States.

Turkey’s goal is to push back the Syrian Kurds — considered enemies by Turkey — from the border region.

Turkey also claims the buffer region would be fit for the resettlement of millions of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey.

But aid agencies warned the offensive could create a new humanitarian crisis, as well as a fresh wave of displaced people and refugees.

An even greater worry was the thousands of Islamic State prisoners and their families held by the Syrian Kurdish forces after the fall of the militant group’s self-declared “caliphate.”

A security breakdown at the detention camps could open the way for the fighters and others to slip away.

Already frightened people were on the move in Syria.

Cars, trucks and motorcycles — with no empty seats — streamed away from the border.

Black smoke rose from some buildings.

Random fires broke out.

Some Turkish ground forces moved into Syria after nightfall.

A statement from the Turkish military said a “land operation” began in an area east of the Euphrates River, but gave no further details on the scope of the incursion.

President Trump called Turkish offensive was “a bad idea,” but also stood by his decision to pull back U.S. forces to effectively clear the way for Turkey.

“Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place,” he added.

“We will hold them to this commitment.”

The past weeks have seen a buildup of Turkish forces on the border, belligerent speeches by Turkish officials, and dire warnings from Turkey’s NATO allies and others.

In the first hours of the operation, Turkish warplanes and artillery shelled towns along a 250-mile swath, stretching from Ain Issa, about 30 miles from the Euphrates River to Malikiyah, near Syria’s border with Iraq.

Turkish shelling killed at least five civilians, according to the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as the Syrian Kurdish-led militias are known.

Mortar fire from Syria landed in at least two Turkish towns, but caused no injuries, Turkish media reported.

The offensive has presented the Trump administration with a dilemma as it has sought to balance Washington’s partnership with Turkey and its links to the Syrian Kurdish forces that helped beat back the Islamic State.

Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish fighters as terrorists because of their links to Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decade-long battle in southeastern Turkey for greater autonomy.

Turkey has launched cross-border attacks on PKK bases in northern Iraq since the 1990s.

A spokesman for Erdogan, Fahrettin Altun, writing in The Washington Post on Wednesday, called for international support for Turkey’s offensive.

“Turkey has no ambition in northeastern Syria except to neutralize a long-standing threat against Turkish citizens and to liberate the local population from the yoke of armed thugs,” Altun wrote.

The coming days would make clear whether Turkey intended to conduct a symbolic push across the frontier, or follow through with plans to move deeper into Syrian territory, analysts said.

As the battle approached, residents of Syria’s border towns braced for the worst.

Mikael Mohammed, a Kurdish father of three who owns a clothing store in Tal Abyad, a quarter-mile from the Turkish frontier, said he had not had any customers for an entire day.

U.S. troops based in the town withdrew early Monday after the White House announcement.

“People who are out there in the streets look as if they are going to someone’s funeral …"

"People are scared,” he said.

The town used to feel safe “when we used to see U.S. troops in the streets of Tal Abyad.”

“Yesterday, we saw U.S. troops, but this time they were on their way out of the area, and that terrified people,” he said.

By Wednesday afternoon, worry had turned to dread.

“Turkish warplanes have started to carry out airstrikes on civilian areas."

"There is a huge panic among people of the region,” Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF, wrote on Twitter.

Turkey had conducted airstrikes about 25 miles into Syrian territory, according to another SDF statement.

In the town of Qamishli, the SDF traded fire with Turkish forces across the border, according to a farm owner who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid possible reprisals.

Residents hoarded food and lined up at gas stations.

People had started leaving the town, headed further away from the Turkish border, he said.

Apart from scattered skirmishes, the SDF did not appear to be mounting a full-fledge counter attack, according to Dareen Khalifa, senior Syria analyst for International Crisis Group.

“My understanding is that they are still hoping that this would be a strictly limited operation that would not spread to any Kurdish towns, and that they would be able to continue to keep U.S. protection,” she said.

“This is a battle the would surely lose,” she added, referring to the SDF.

“The flat typography favors conventional warfare.”

Erdogan’s government has watched nervously for years as Syria’s Kurds have built an autonomous enclave along Turkey’s border.

It railed against the United States for relying on the Kurds as a military partner and bristled as their enemies accumulated weapons and territory.

For years, the United States and Turkey have been engaged in tortured negotiations aimed at soothing Ankara’s security concerns.

There was also the risk that American troops still positioned in Syria could get caught in the crossfire.

A U.S. official said the Trump administration had provided Turkey with a list of no-strike locations where U.S. personnel were stationed.

The International Rescue Committee warned that two million civilians who lived in the military zone were at risk — “many of whom have already survived ISIS brutality and multiple displacements,” the group said in a statement, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

The offensive threatened to displace as many as 300,000 people, the group said.

Already, there were reports of people fleeing the fighting “with only the clothes on their backs.”

kareem.fahim@washpost.com

karen.deyoung@washpost.com

DeYoung reported from Washington and Khattab from Beirut. Sarah Dadouch and Liz Sly in Beirut and Louisa Loveluck in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

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Re: TURKEY

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WHAT A BUNCH OF STUPID TALK THIS ALL IS ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"White House Threatens Turkey With Crippling Sanctions"


Alan Rappeport and David E. Sanger

11 OCTOBER 2019

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday belatedly threatened new sanctions against Turkey that officials said could cripple Turkey’s economy in response to its military offensive against Kurds in northern Syria.

President Trump will sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department new powers to punish Turkish government officials if Turkey targets ethnic and religious minorities in its operations against the Kurds.

The White House also warned that if any Islamic State fighters being held in prisons in the area were allowed by Turkey to escape, the United States would respond forcefully.

“We can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in a briefing at the White House.

The Trump administration said, however, that it was not yet moving ahead with any new sanctions against Turkey.


Mr. Trump’s decision to remove American forces from the region in advance of the Turkish offensive has been met with bipartisan condemnation in Congress.

Lawmakers are moving forward with bipartisan sanctions legislation, which could have enough votes to override a presidential veto.

In the days since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Mr. Trump by telephone about pulling American troops out of Syria, several senior American diplomats have said that Mr. Trump made a crucial error by not threatening sanctions ahead of the withdrawal.

By doing so after the fact, Mr. Erdogan would lose face if he changed course in response to such a warning.


Mr. Mnuchin said that he did not believe that the president’s actions were what led to the current situation in the region.

Mr. Trump had told the Turkish president that American troops fighting alongside the Kurds in a countermission against the Islamic State would be pulled back from the border with Syria, which critics of the president’s policy said was, in effect, giving the Turks a greenlight to start their offensive.

The executive order will give Treasury the authority to impose secondary sanctions against anyone engaging in “knowing and significant transactions” with designated individuals and entities of Turkey’s government.

Mr. Mnuchin said that banks should be on notice for potential sanctions actions by the United States.

A senior State Department official said sanctions likely would be similar to economic penalties that were imposed in 2018 against the Turkish justice minister and interior minister.

Those sanctions were designed to punish Mr. Erdogan’s government for detaining an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, on espionage charges.

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Re: TURKEY

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NEWSWEEK

"Exclusive: Turkey Bombs US Special Forces in Syria Attack, Apparently by Mistake"


Tom O'Connor

11 OCTOBER 2019

A contingent of U.S. Special Forces has been caught up in Turkish shelling against U.S.-backed Kurdish positions in northern Syria.

Newsweek has learned through both an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence official and senior Pentagon official that Special Forces operating in the Mashtenour hill in the majority-Kurdish city of Kobani fell under artillery fire from Turkish forces conducting their so-called "Operation Spring Peace" against Kurdish forces backed by the U.S. but considered terrorist organizations by Turkey.

The senior Pentagon official said that Turkish forces should be aware of U.S. positions "down to the grid."

While the official could not specify the exact number of personnel present, but indicated they were "small numbers below company level," so somewhere between 15 and 100 troops.

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Re: TURKEY

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

"ISIS Rears Its Head, Adding to Chaos as Turkey Battles Kurds"


Carlotta Gall and Patrick Kingsley

11 OCTOBER 2019

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — The Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria raised new fears of a resurgence of the Islamic State on Friday, as five militants escaped from a Kurdish-run prison and the extremist group claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded in the regional capital.

As Turkish troops launched a third night of airstrikes and ground incursions, Kurdish fighters said they had thwarted a second attempt to break out of a detention camp for families of Islamic State members.

The moves compounded a mounting sense of turmoil in northeast Syria, where tens of thousands of residents were reported fleeing south.

The Turkish government said its troops had advanced five miles inside part of the country.

Several major roads had been blocked and a major hospital abandoned.

Since Wednesday, Turkish forces have pummeled Kurdish-held territory with airstrikes and sent in ground troops, trying to seize land controlled by a Kurdish-led militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

That militia fought alongside United States troops in the recent war against the Islamic State.


The campaign began after President Trump suddenly ordered American troops to withdraw from the area, giving implicit approval to Turkey’s long-anticipated attack on the Kurdish-led militia.

Mr. Trump’s decision was widely criticized, including by his Republican allies in the United States, who said it was a betrayal of an ally — the Kurds — that could cause a re-emergence of the Islamic State.

The White House said Mr. Trump would sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department new powers to punish officials in Turkey — a NATO ally — if the Turkish military targeted ethnic and religious minorities.

“We hope we don’t have to use them,” said Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.

“But we can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to.”

Since pulling out, American officials have expressed growing concern at the direction the Turkish incursion has taken, with officials warning on Friday that the United States would respond forcefully if Islamic State fighters were allowed to escape from prisons in the area.

On Friday afternoon, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey vowed to continue the campaign.

“The West and the U.S., together they say, ‘You are killing the Kurds’,” said Mr. Erdogan in a speech.

“Kurds are our brothers."

"This struggle of ours is not against Kurds."

"It is against terror groups.’’

The Turkish government has framed the campaign as a counterterrorist operation because the Kurdish-led militia has close ties with a banned Turkey-based guerrilla movement that has waged a decades-long struggle against the Turkish state.

Mr. Erdogan has promised that the fight against the Islamic State will continue, and that his forces and their allies will continue to guard any captured militants in Kurdish-held prisons.

But the operation has already proved highly disruptive to efforts to keep the Islamic State at bay.

Although American and Kurdish forces have defeated Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria, the group has sleeper cells in the region that could use the turmoil to retake the land they controlled in the early years of the Syrian civil war.

And the Kurdish militia has diverted soldiers to fight the invasion and abandoned joint operations with American troops as it prioritizes the defense of its land.

On Friday, a car bomb exploded on a residential street in Qamishli, the de facto capital of the Kurdish-held region — a rare act of Islamic State terrorism in a city that was relatively free of trouble before the Turkish assault began.

The Turkish bombardment has also endangered the security of several Kurdish-run prisons for Islamic State militants, with at least three in the vicinity of continuing Turkish airstrikes.

It is widely feared that in the chaos, Islamic State fighters will escape captivity, as the five did on Friday.

Kurdish authorities said shells had reached two Kurdish-controlled displacement camps, prompting officials to move some of their 20,000 inhabitants farther south.

One of the camps, in Ain Issa, has hundreds of relatives of Islamic State fighters, heightening fears over the effect that the Turkish invasion will have on the fight against the militant group.

Kurdish forces also released video of a third camp, which they said showed an effort to escape by members of Islamic State families.

A second video, seen by The New York Times, appeared to show prisoners trying to escape a Kurdish-controlled jail after it was hit by an airstrike.

While the Turkish airstrikes have hit targets along most of the 480-kilometer-long Kurdish-held territory, the ground battle has focused on two small but strategically located Syrian border towns, Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain.

Turkish troops and their Syrian Arab allies have captured a cluster of villages around the two towns, which lie in the center of the Kurdish region.

The troops have in one place established a front line five miles from the Turkish border, the Turkish vice president, Fuat Oktay, said on Friday evening, according to Turkish media.

Their presence has prompted 100,000 residents to flee south, according to United Nations estimates, and forced the evacuation of a major hospital in Tel Abyad that was run by Doctors Without Borders, an international medical charity.

A second hospital, in Ras al-Ain, was also evacuated, according to a separate report by the Rojava Information Center, an information service run by activists in the region.

Turkish mortar shells also landed close to United States troops near the city of Kobani on Friday, prompting a complaint from the American military, the Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed.

No one was killed.

At least 54 Kurdish fighters have been killed since Wednesday, along with 42 from the Turkish-backed force, according to tolls compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain.

Turkish towns north of the border have also been affected, as Kurdish fighters have returned fire.

Since fighting began on Wednesday, at least 17 civilians, including four children, have been killed in Turkish border towns.

At least four Turkish soldiers have died in the fighting, according to Turkish officials.

An entire Turkish border town — Ceylanpinar — was evacuated, after two girls were killed in a rocket strike Thursday and two people were seriously wounded Friday.

Ceylanpinar was largely deserted Friday afternoon, with shops shuttered and only stray dogs and a few men slipping out to chat or buy cigarettes.

“Our city is a ghost town,” complained Musa Sahman, 70, who sells a local raw meat delicacy but had no customers.

“Our government is fighting for Syria, but we don’t have any business.”

But the damage has been far worse on the Kurdish side, where 60 civilians have died since Wednesday, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent.

The American decision to ally with Kurdish militias set the stage for Turkey’s invasion this week.

By capturing land previously held by the Islamic State, Kurdish fighters were then able to create an autonomous statelet that now spans roughly a quarter of all Syrian territory and is effectively independent of the central Syrian government in Damascus.

But this dynamic has been chastening for Syria’s northern neighbor, Turkey, which views the central figures in the autonomous Kurdish region as hostile actors with strong connections to a violent Kurdish nationalist group inside Turkey itself.

Turkey’s military campaign has come hand in hand with a crackdown on criticism inside Turkey.

The state-run media authority warned that it would “silence” any outlet deemed to have published material damaging to the offensive.

Two editors at separate independent news websites were briefly detained, their outlets reported.

“We will never tolerate broadcasts that will negatively affect our beloved nation and glorious soldiers’ morale and motivation, that serves the aim of terror, and might mislead our citizens with faulty, wrong and biased information,” the media authority said in a statement.

The Turkish incursion has prompted a mixed reaction from the 3.6 million Syrian refugees sheltering in Turkey.

Some fear they will end up being deported to the areas recaptured by Turkish forces in northern Syria, despite having no ancestral links there.

Others from the areas of northern Syria currently under attack said they welcomed the campaign.

In Turkey, on a hilltop overlooking the Syrian border and the town of Tel Abyad, a lone Syrian man, Mehmet Huseyn, 45, crouched in the shade of a rusting water tank, scanning the horizon for signs of movement.

His brother and family were in his home village, six miles beyond the ridgeline, while he had been working as a farm laborer in Turkey for four years to support his family of seven, he said.

“Our village is there,” he said.

“I am looking in case they leave and we can return home.”

But it pained him to see more war visited on his home.

“Our insides are burning,” he said.

“We love land and our country.”

Carlotta Gall reported from Ceylanpinar and Akcakale, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Anton Troianovski from Moscow, Ben Hubbard from Erbil, Iraq, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Re: TURKEY

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

"Turkish forces say they've captured key Syrian border town"


By MEHMET GUZEL, Associated Press

12 OCTOBER 2019

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — Turkey's military said it captured a key Syrian border town under heavy bombardment Saturday in its most significant gain since an offensive against Kurdish fighters began four days ago, with no sign of relenting despite mounting international criticism.

Turkish troops entered central Ras al-Ayn, according to Turkey's Defense Ministry and a war monitor group.

The ministry tweeted: "Ras al-Ayn's residential center has been taken under control through the successful operations in the east of Euphrates" River.

It marked the biggest gain made by Turkey since the invasion began Wednesday.

The continued push by Turkey into Syria comes days after President Donald Trump cleared the way for Turkey's air and ground offensive, pulling back U.S. forces and saying he wanted to stop getting involved with "endless wars."

Trump's decision drew swift bipartisan criticism that he was endangering regional stability and risking the lives of Syrian Kurdish allies who brought down the Islamic State group in Syria.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces was the main U.S. ally in the fight and lost 11,000 fighters in the nearly five-year battle against IS.

Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition fighters have made gains recently capturing several northern villages in fighting and bombardment that left dozens of people killed or wounded.

The invasion also has forced nearly 100,000 people to flee their homes amid concerns that IS might take advantage of the chaos and try to rise again after its defeat in Syria earlier this year.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, called on the United States to carry out its "moral responsibilities" and close northern Syrian airspace to Turkish warplanes.

"We don't want them to send their soldiers to the front lines and put their lives in danger," the statement said.

"What we want is for them" to close the airspace for Turkish warplanes.


During a meeting Saturday in Cairo, the 22-member Arab League condemned what it described as "Turkey's aggression against Syria" and warned that Ankara will be responsible for the spread of terrorism following its invasion.

The league said Arab states might take some measures against Ankara.

It called on the U.N. Security Council to force Turkey to stop the offensive.

The Turkish offensive was widely criticized by Syria and some Western countries, which called on Turkey to cease its military operations.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced Saturday that Germany would curtail its arms exports to Turkey.

Maas told the weekly Bild am Sonntag that "against the background of the Turkish military offensive in northeastern Syria, the government will not issue any new permissions for any weapons that can be used by Turkey in Syria."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey won't stop until the Syrian Kurdish forces withdraw below a 32 kilometer (20 mile) deep line from the border.

During the capture of Ras al-Ayn's residential center, an Associated Press journalist across the border heard sporadic clashes as Turkish howitzers struck the town and Turkish jets screeched overhead.

Syrian Kurdish forces appeared to be holding out in some areas of the town.

The SDF released two videos said to be from inside Ras al-Ayn, showing fighters saying that it was Saturday and they were still there.

The fighting was ongoing as the Kurdish fighters sought to reverse the Turkish advance into the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Ras al-Ayn is one of the biggest towns along the border and is in the middle of the area where Turkey plans to set up its safe zone.

The ethnically and religiously mixed town with a population of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians and Syriac Christians had been under the control of Kurdish fighters since 2013.

IS members tried to enter Ras al-Ayn following their rise in Syria and Iraq in 2014 but failed.

Most of the town's residents have fled in recent days for fear of the invasion.

Earlier Saturday, Turkish troops moved to seize control of key highways in northeastern Syria, the Turkish military and the Syrian Observatory said.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency said that Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces had taken control of the M-4 highway that connects the towns of Manbij and Qamishli.

The SDF said that Turkish troops and their Syrian allies reached the highway briefly before being pushed back again.

Kurdish news agencies including Hawar and Rudaw said that Hevreen Khalaf, secretary general of the Future Syria Party, was killed Saturday as she was driving on the M-4 highway.

Rudaw's correspondent blamed Turkish forces for targeting Khalaf's car, and Hawar blamed "Turkey's mercenaries."

The Observatory said six people, including Khalaf, were killed by Turkey-backed opposition fighters on the road that they briefly cut before withdrawing.

The Turkish military aims to clear Syrian border towns of Kurdish fighters' presence, saying they are a national security threat.

Since Wednesday, Turkish troops and Syrian opposition fighters backed by Ankara have been advancing under the cover of airstrikes and artillery shelling.

Turkey has said it aims to push back the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which it considers terrorists for links to a decadeslong Kurdish insurgency within its own borders.

The YPG is a main component of the SDF.

The U.N. estimated the number of displaced at 100,000 since Wednesday, saying that markets, schools and clinics also were closed.

Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian crisis, with nearly a half-million people at risk in northeastern Syria.

A civilian wounded in a mortar strike from Syria on Friday in the Turkish border town of Suruc died, Anadolu news agency reported Saturday, bringing the civilian death toll to 18 in Turkey.

Turkey's interior minister said hundreds of mortars, fired from Syria, have landed in Turkish border towns.

The Observatory that keeps track of Syria's civil war said 74 Kurdish-led SDF fighters have been killed since Wednesday as well as 49 Syrian opposition fighters backed by Turkey.

That's in addition to 38 civilians on the Syrian side.

It added that Turkish troops now control 23 villages in northeastern Syria.

Turkey's defense ministry said it "neutralized" 459 Syrian Kurdish fighters.

The number could not be independently verified.

Four Turkish soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the offensive, including two who were killed in Syria's northwest.

France's leader warned Trump in a phone call that Turkey's military action in northern Syria could lead to a resurgence of IS activity.

President Emmanuel Macron "reiterated the need to make the Turkish offensive stop immediately," his office said in a statement Saturday.

A Kurdish police force in northern Syria said a car bomb exploded early Saturday outside a prison where IS members are being held in the northeastern city of Hassakeh.

It was not immediately clear if there were any serious injuries or deaths.

Kurdish fighters are holding about 10,000 IS fighters, including some 2,000 foreigners.

___

Associated Press writers Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.

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REUTERS

"Turkish-led forces seize parts of Syrian town in offensive"


By Tom Perry and Daren Butler

13 OCTOBER 2019

BEIRUT/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish forces and their Syrian allies seized large parts of the northern Syrian town of Suluk, a war monitor said on Sunday, as they pressed on with their offensive against Kurdish militia for a fifth day in the face of fierce international opposition.

Turkey is facing threats of possible sanctions from the United States unless it calls off the incursion.

Two of its NATO allies, Germany and France, have said they are halting weapons exports to Turkey and the Arab League has denounced the operation.

Ankara launched the cross-border assault against the YPG militia after U.S President Donald Trump withdrew some U.S. troops from the border region.

Turkey says the YPG is a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish militants in Turkey.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Turkish forces and Syrian rebels entered Suluk, some 10 km (6 miles) from Turkey's border.

Turkey's state-owned Anadolu news agency said the rebels seized complete control of Suluk.

Suluk is southeast of the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad, one of the two main targets in the incursion, which was shelled by Turkish howitzers on Sunday morning, a witness in the neighboring Turkish town of Akcakale said.

Gunfire also resounded around the Syrian border town of Ras al Ain, some 120 km (75 miles) to the east of Tel Abyad, while Turkish artillery continued to target the area, a Reuters reporter across the border in Turkey's Ceylanpinar said.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, known as the National Army, advanced into Ras al Ain on Saturday but by Sunday there were still conflicting reports on who held control.

The Syrian Observatory monitoring group said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the YPG comprises the main fighting element, had recovered "almost full control" of Ras al Ain after a counter attack.

A spokesman for the National Army denied this, saying its forces were still in the positions they took on Saturday.

130,000 DISPLACED

Turkey's incursion has raised international alarm over its mass displacement of civilians and the possibility of Islamic State militants escaping from Kurdish prisons.

The Kurdish-led forces have been key allies for the United States in eliminating the jihadist group from northern Syria.

More than 130,000 people have been displaced from rural areas around Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain as a result of the fighting, the United Nations said on Sunday.

In a statement, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said OCHA and other relief agencies estimated up to 400,000 civilians in the Syrian conflict zone may require aid and protection in the coming period.

In the latest criticism, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed "grave concern" to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, saying the offensive may worsen the humanitarian situation and undermine progress against Islamic State.

"He urged the President to end the operation and enter into dialogue," a spokesman for Johnson said after a telephone call between the two leaders on Saturday evening.

Turkey's Defence Ministry said on Sunday that 480 YPG militants had been "neutralized" since the operation began, a term that commonly means killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization that reports on the war, said 74 Kurdish-led fighters, 49 Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and 30 civilians have been killed in the fighting.

In Turkey, 18 civilians have been killed in cross-border bombardment, Turkish media and officials say.

ISLAMIC STATE ESCAPEES

The SDF holds most of the northern Syrian territory that once made up Islamic State's "caliphate" in the country.

It has been keeping thousands of fighters from the jihadist group in jail and tens of thousands of their family members in camps.

The Kurdish-led administration for northern and eastern Syria said the offensive was nearing a camp for displaced people holding thousands of members of "Islamic State (IS) families".

Around 100 people - women affiliated with IS and their children - have escaped from the camp, the Observatory said.

The shelling of the camp at Ain Issa, north of Raqqa and about 30 km (20 miles) south of the border represented "support for the revival of the Daesh organization", the Kurdish-led administration said, referring to IS militants.

Addressing the U.N. Security Council, the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and other international parties, the Kurdish-led administration urged them "to bear your responsibilities and to intervene quickly to prevent a catastrophe whose effects will not be limited to Syria alone but will knock on all your doors when matters get out of control".

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a car bomb on Friday in Qamishli, the largest city in the Kurdish-held area, where some IS militants fled from a jail.

On Saturday Trump defended his decision to withdraw troops from the Syrian border region, telling conservative Christian activists that the United States should prioritize protecting its own borders.

"Let them have their borders, but I don't think our soldiers should be there for the next 50 years guarding a border between Turkey and Syria when we can't guard our own borders at home," Trump said in a speech in Washington.

Turkey's stated objective is to set up a "safe zone" inside Syria to resettle many of the 3.6 million Syrian war refugees it has been hosting.

Erdogan has threatened to send them to Europe if the EU does not back his assault.


He has also dismissed the growing condemnation of the operation, saying that Turkey "will not stop it, no matter what anyone says".

The SDF accused Turkey-backed rebel fighters of killing a Kurdish politician in a road ambush on Saturday.

The rebel force denied it, saying it had not advanced that far.

The Syrian Observatory said Turkey-backed groups had killed nine civilians on the road, including Hervin Khalaf, co-chair of the secular Future Syria Party.

(Reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul, Tom Perry in Beirut and Reuters correspondents in the region, Kirsti Knolle in Vienna; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Frances Kerry)

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

"U.S. Forces Leave ‘High-Value’ ISIS Detainees Behind in Retreat From Syria"


Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Carlotta Gall and Patrick Kingsley

13 OCTOBER 2019

The American military was unable to carry out a plan to transfer about five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of Kurdish-run wartime prisons before the Pentagon decided to move its forces out of northern Syria and pave the way for a Turkish-led invasion, according to two American officials.

In the same area on Sunday, hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers escaped from a low-security detention camp in the region, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Turkish ground invasion and the accompanying strikes.

Both developments underscored the pandemonium unleashed by President Trump’s sudden decision to order American troops to evacuate part of the Syrian region bordering Turkey.

That allowed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to order an invasion of Syrian territory controlled by a Kurdish-led militia that was at the center of American-led efforts to contain the Islamic State over the past several years.

On Sunday, the militia was forced to seek the protection of the Syrian government.

The Turkish government sees the Kurdish military presence so close to its border as a serious security threat, because the Kurdish forces have close ties with a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey itself.

Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace in northern Syria, and has already begun to unleash sectarian bloodshed.

It also risks enabling a resurgence of the Islamic State.

The extremist group no longer controls any territory in Syria, but it still has sleeper cells and supporters across parts of the country.

ISIS has already claimed responsibility for at least two attacks since the start of the invasion, including one car bomb in a border city, Qamishli, and another on an international military base outside Hasaka, a regional capital further to the south.

Mr. Trump claimed last week that the United States had taken out the worst ISIS detainees to ensure they would not escape.

But in fact the American military was able to take custody of only two British detainees — half of a cell dubbed the Beatles that tortured and killed Western hostages — the officials said.

As the week progressed and Kurdish casualties mounted, the onetime American ally known as the Syrian Democratic Forces grew increasingly angry at the United States.

They cast Mr. Trump’s move as a betrayal.


The Kurds refused, the officials said, to cooperate in permitting the American military to take out any more detainees from the constellation of ad hoc wartime detention sites for captive ISIS fighters.

These range from former schoolhouses in towns like Ain Eissa and Kobani to a former Syrian government prison at Hasaka.

The prisons hold about 11,000 men, about 9,000 of them Syrian or Iraqi Arabs.

About 2,000 come from some 50 other nations whose governments have refused to repatriate them.

Five captives escaped during a Turkish bombardment on a Kurdish-run prison in Qamishli on Friday, Kurdish officials said.

The Kurdish authorities also operate camps for families displaced by the conflict that hold tens of thousands of people, many of them non-Syrian wives and children of Islamic State fighters.

One major camp in Ain Eissa was left unguarded on Sunday morning after a Turkish airstrike, and as Turkish-backed troops advanced close to the town, according to an administrator at the camp, Jalal al-Iyaf.

In the mayhem that followed, more than 500 relatives of ISIS fighters housed in a secure part of the camp escaped, Mr. al-Iyaf said.

A Kurdish official also said that the ISIS flag had been raised in the countryside between the camp and the Turkish border.

But determining the exact state of play on the ground proved difficult, as the advances by Turkish-backed Arab fighters scattered Kurdish officials who had previously been able to provide information.

The likelihood of an ISIS resurgence remains hard to gauge, since the Syrian Kurdish leadership may have exaggerated some incidents to catch the West’s attention.

The camp escape came hours before the United States military said it would relocate its remaining troops in northern Syria to other areas of the country in the coming weeks.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper announced in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the United States found itself “likely caught between two opposing advancing armies” in northern Syria.

The reference was to the possibility of an impending clash between Turkish forces and the Syrian government and its Russian allies.

Kurdish militias are now allying with them in the absence of support from their former American allies

On Sunday evening, the Kurdish authorities announced a deal with the Syrian government to allow the Syrian Army back into Kurdish-held areas, with regime troops due to enter the city of Kobani overnight.

“It has been agreed with the Syrian government, which has a duty to protect the country’s borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty, that the Syrian army can enter and deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to support the S.D.F. to repel this aggression and liberate the areas entered by the Turkish army and its mercenaries,” the Kurdish authorities said in a statement on Sunday night.

Mr. Trump took to Twitter to defend his decision last week to pull troops back from the border region, portraying himself as powerless to end a longstanding feud between Kurdish militants and a Turkish government that sees their quest as a threat to its sovereignty.

“The Kurds and Turkey have been fighting for many years,” Mr. Trump wrote on Sunday.

Mr. Trump also tried to assuage his critics, including Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who broke with the president over his Syria decision and is promising bipartisan legislation to slap economic sanctions on Turkey.

“Dealing with @LindseyGrahamSC and many members of Congress, including Democrats, about imposing powerful Sanctions on Turkey,” Mr. Trump wrote.

“Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought.”

But his decision has already had devastating consequences for the Kurds.

They lost thousands of fighters in the battle against the extremists.

Now they are now fighting a war on two fronts, with dozens of fighters killed since the new round of fighting began on Wednesday.

The fighting has caused the deaths of dozens of civilians killed in airstrikes, and has forced over 130,000 from their homes, according to the United Nations, and raised the specter of sectarian bloodshed.

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters killed a Kurdish politician and at least two other captives, one with his hands tied behind his back, in what could constitute a war crime.

In a video of one of the killings, the fighters used a sectarian epithet to describe the victims.

The fighting has displaced people who have already been forced from their homes several times.

At the camp in Ain Eissa where around 500 ISIS sympathizers staged a breakout on Sunday, the 13,000 other residents include refugees from Iraq who had sought safety in Syria because of war and insurgency at home.

Scores of residents fled the camp in the aftermath of an airstrike on Sunday, according to aid workers there.

“Everyone thought that the camp was internationally protected, but in the end there was nothing,” said Mr. al-Iyaf, the administrator at the camp.

“It was not protected at all.”

By nightfall, the camp remained unguarded, with Turkish-led forces close to the outskirts of the city, Mr. al-Iyaf said.

After establishing a foothold on Saturday in Ras al-Ain, a strategic town close to the Turkish border, Turkish troops and their Arab proxies made major progress on the ground on Sunday.

A Syrian Arab militia under Turkish command pushed deeper into Kurdish-held territory, blocking major roads, ambushing civilians and claiming the capture of a second strategic town in northern Syria, Tel Abyad, that lies adjacent to the border.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Erdogan announced that his forces now controlled nearly 70 square miles of territory in northern Syria.

They have also taken control of the important highway connecting the two flanks of Kurdish-held territory, the Turkish defense ministry said.

This allows Turkish troops and their proxies to block supply lines between Kurdish forces — and cut an exit route to Iraq.

It also makes it harder for American troops to leave Syria by road.

Mr. Erdogan suggested his campaign was now expanding.

He announced that the Turkish force would attempt to capture Hasaka, a major Kurdish-run city that sits well beyond the territory that Mr. Erdogan initially said he had set out to capture.

Since the Syrian civil war began eight years ago, northern Syria has changed hands several times, as rebels, Islamists, extremist groups and Kurdish factions have vied with government forces for control.

After joining American troops to drive out the Islamic State, the Kurdish-led militia emerged as the dominant force across the area, taking control of former ISIS territory and guarding former ISIS fighters on behalf of the United States and other international allies.

But with Turkey making increasing noise in recent months about forcing the Kurdish militia away from its border, the American military began making contingency plans to get about five dozen of the highest-priority detainees out of Syria.

The planning began last December, when Mr. Trump first announced that he would withdraw troops from the country before his administration slowed down that plan, one official said.

American special forces moved first to get the two British detainees, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, out on October 9, in part because there was a clear disposition plan for them already in place: The Justice Department is planning to bring them to Virginia for prosecution.

They are now being held in Iraq.

But as the military then sought to take custody of additional detainees, the Kurds refused to cooperate, the two American officials said.

Privately, the Kurds — who announced a deal on Sunday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — also threatened to call for the United States to leave Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria.

Now, with the Pentagon withdrawing American forces, the ability to take any more detainees out — even if the Kurds were to start cooperating again — has essentially evaporated, they said.

Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, Carlotta Gall from Akcakale, Turkey, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Ben Hubbard contributed reporting from Dohuk, Iraq, Eric Schmitt and Peter Baker from Washington, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon, and Iliana Magra from London.

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Re: TURKEY

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THE WASHINGTON POST

"U. S.-allied Kurds strike deal to bring Assad’s Syrian troops back into Kurdish areas"


Liz Sly, Louisa Loveluck, Asser Khattab, Sarah Dadouch

14 OCTOBER 2019

BEIRUT — Syrian government troops began moving toward towns near the Turkish border Sunday night under a deal struck with Syrian Kurds, following a chaotic day that saw the unraveling of the U.S. mission in northeastern Syria.

Hundreds of Islamic State family members escaped a detention camp after Turkish shellfire hit the area, U.S. troops pulled out from another base and Turkish-backed forces consolidated their hold over a vital highway, cutting the main U.S. supply route into Syria.

By the time Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to announce that President Trump had ordered the final withdrawal of the 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria, it was already clear that the U.S. presence had become unsustainable, U.S. officials said.

The announcement by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that they had reached an agreement with the Iranian- and Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad further undermined the prospect of any continued U.S. presence in the country.

The deal will bring forces loyal to Assad back into towns and cities that have been under Kurdish control for seven years.


“An agreement has been reached with the Syrian government — whose duty it is to protect the country’s borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty — for the Syrian Army to enter and deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to help the SDF stop this aggression” by Turkey, the SDF said in a statement.

It was unclear where and when the Syrian troops would deploy or whether U.S. forces were already pulling out of areas where they are based.

U.S. officials declined to confirm local media reports that troops had pulled out of the towns of Manbij and Kobane, where local officials confirmed they had agreed to allow Syrian troops to deploy.

Witnesses said celebratory gunfire erupted in parts of the town of Qamishli as Syrian troop reinforcements flew into the local airport, according to a Kurdish security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

He said local Kurdish forces had been ordered not to confront Syrian troops, who arrived to bolster a small contingent of government forces that had remained in the city after Kurdish forces took it over in 2012.

The deal followed three days of negotiations brokered by Russia between the Syrian government and the SDF, which had reached the conclusion it could no longer count on the United States, its chief ally for the past five years in the fight against the Islamic State, according to a Kurdish intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Events earlier in the day highlighted the rapid deterioration of both the SDF’s and the United States’ ability to contain swifter-than-expected Turkish advances deep into Syrian territory.


As Turkish-backed Syrian rebels approached the town of Ain Issa, 20 miles from the Turkish border, hundreds of Islamic State family members escaped from a camp housing displaced people, taking advantage of the mayhem that ensued as Turkish artillery pounded the area.

The Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria said 785 people affiliated with the Islamic State escaped from a camp that had housed 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children.

About a thousand of those, almost all foreigners, had been identified as Islamic State supporters and had been housed in a separate section of the camp known as the Annex.

That section is now “completely empty,” according to an aid worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The claim that the Islamic State-linked families had escaped could not be independently confirmed.

But Kurdish officials and aid groups said thousands of civilians were also leaving, fleeing across fields to escape the shelling.

The U.S. military told aid workers to evacuate.

Ain Issa, which served as the headquarters of the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria, owes its significance to its position beside the important M4 highway, which runs from the Iraqi border across northeastern Syria.

It is the main supply route in and out of Syria for the 1,000 U.S. troops deployed there and for much of the limited aid that reaches northeastern Syria.

As the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels closed in on Sunday, the small number of U.S. troops based in the town were relocated to other bases in Syria, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

Turkish-backed rebels have set up checkpoints on the highway near Ain Issa, cutting off U.S. troops in bases to the west, in the Syrian cities of Manbij and Kobane.

Those troops came under Turkish artillery fire Friday night in what some U.S. soldiers suspect was a deliberate attempt to drive them away from the bulk of the U.S. forces farther east, Kurdish and U.S. officials said.

There were conflicting reports from Washington on whether Trump intends to order the withdrawal of all 1,000 of the U.S. troops imminently or simply to relocate those closest to the front lines to safer positions.

But with their supply lines severed, the region in disarray and their Kurdish allies focused on fighting Turkey and not the Islamic State, the U.S. troop presence in northeast Syria is becoming increasingly untenable, the U.S. official said.

Residents of northeast Syria said they were stunned by the speed with which SDF defenses appeared to be collapsing, along with America’s commitment to remain in the area alongside its allies in the five-year fight against the Islamic State, Kurdish officials said.

It represents a gamble for the Kurds, who appeared to have secured no guarantees for the survival of the autonomy they have secured over the area over the past seven years.

Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, said the Kurds felt they had no choice but to turn to Damascus in light of what he called the “betrayal” of the United States.

“This has obliged us to look for alternative options,” he said.

A Syrian government announcement that Syrian troops were heading to the area to assume control from the Syrian Democratic Forces and confront the Turks raised hopes that an end to the chaos was in sight, according to a Kurdish woman who fled her home near the front lines three days ago and has taken refuge in the city of Qamishli.

“For the regime to intervene and deploy its forces on the Turkish border is a comforting thought,” said the woman, who gave her name as Nowruz.

“If a deal with the regime is what it takes to stop these massacres, then so be it."

"At the end of the day, we are all Syrians, and the regime is Syrian, too.”

“The Americans betrayed us."

"We do not trust them anymore,” she added.

The international aid effort to assist the 130,000 people displaced and those wounded in the fighting is also at risk.

The Kurdish administration said all deliveries of food and medical aid have been suspended.

There were indications that some agencies have started withdrawing their staff.

A United Nations official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that half of the aid workers in the areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces have evacuated are others are expected to follow.

A Turkish airstrike against a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians and journalists killed at least nine people, illustrating the dangers confronting those who remain in the area, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

The convoy was approaching the town of Ras al-Ain, one of the first two border towns targeted by the Turkish invasion, when a warplane struck.

Videos of the aftermath showed limbs and body parts scattered across a wide area and horrific injuries suffered by some of the survivors.

Ain Issa is the third town from which U.S. troops have withdrawn since Trump announced the United States would not stand in the way of a Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria aimed at pushing U.S.-allied Kurdish-led forces away from the Turkish border.

Around 50 troops withdrew Monday from the border towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, which were the first targets of the Turkish advance.

Turkey regards the Syrian Kurdish fighters that lead the Syrian Democratic Forces a terrorist organization because of their affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish government for decades.

But Turkey’s offensive has drawn almost no international support, leaving the country isolated as it presses ahead with the campaign.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking in Istanbul on Sunday, rejected foreign criticism of the Turkish offensive, as well as calls from Britain and other countries to negotiate with the Syrian Kurds to end the conflict.

“How can you recommend sitting down at the same table with terrorists?” he asked.

He said the operation would continue until the Kurdish-led force is driven back from Turkey’s borders.

“We are not fighting against the Kurds,” Erdogan said.

“We are not targeting Kurdish citizens.”

He gave no indication that the operation would end soon.

Turkish forces would press 19 miles into Syria, he said, and “until they leave the space, we will continue the operation.”

“We will not let a terrorist state be established in northeast Syria.”

liz.sly@washpost.com

louisa.loveluck@washpost.com

asser.khattab@washpost.com

sarah.dadouch@washpost.com

Loveluck reported from Irbil, Iraq. Alice Martins in Derik, Syria, Asser Khattab in Beirut and Kareem Fahim in Istanbul contributed to this report.

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Re: TURKEY

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THE WASHINGTON POST

"Trump orders withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, days after Pentagon downplays possibility"


Karen DeYoung, Dan Lamothe, Liz Sly

14 OCTOBER 2019

U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters announced late Sunday that the Syrian Army would deploy along the Turkish border to “liberate the areas that the Turkish army has entered with its mercenaries.”

The agreement with forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, followed a Syrian government announcement that its troops were heading toward a confrontation with Turkey.

It heralded the entry of yet another armed force into the chaotic situation in northern Syria, sparked by President Trump’s order to withdraw U.S. troops from the area.

After days of assurances from the Pentagon that the United States was not “abandoning” its partners in the fight against the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Mart T. Esper confirmed Sunday that Trump had ordered the withdrawal of virtually all U.S. forces from northern Syria.

The withdrawal order, which followed a small, initial pullback last week, came Saturday, toward the end of a chaotic day in which the viability of the U.S. mission in Syria rapidly unraveled after Turkish troops and their Syrian rebel proxies advanced deep into Syrian territory and cut U.S. supply lines.

U.S. troops were forced to abandon a base in the town of Ain Issa on Sunday morning as the Turkish-led forces approached, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Turkish-backed fighters seized control of the nearby highway, establishing checkpoints and severing the main U.S. supply line to the western portion of territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led alliance that helped the United States defeat the Islamic State.

Hundreds of Islamic State-affiliated foreigners escaped from a camp for women and children in the town as guards fled heavy shelling.

Late Friday afternoon, there were reports that a prison housing foreign and local Islamic State fighters was ablaze.

The fate of the fighters was not known.

“This is total chaos,” a senior administration official said midday Sunday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity amid reports that other forces, including the Syrian Army, were moving into the region.

Although the senior administration official said that “the Turks gave guarantees to us” that U.S. forces would not be harmed, Syrian militias allied with them “are running up and down roads, ambushing and attacking vehicles.”

The militias, known as the Free Syrian Army, “are crazy and not reliable.”

At the same time, the official said, the Islamic State is active in the area, and there are reports that Russian and Syrian forces are moving in as well.

“We obviously could not continue,” said the official, who called the situation “a total s***storm.”

“All these armies are coming in [and a] decision was made to do a deliberate withdrawal."

"That has now been ordered and is being carried out.”

Officials said that the plans for drawing down troops had been rapidly evolving over the last 16 hours, as the Turks pushed their operation farther south, east and west than they had previously informed the United States, and the Kurds appearing to move closer to striking a deal with Russia and the Syrian military under President Bashar al-Assad.

Late Sunday, the official Syrian news agency SANA said that Syrian government forces had begun heading north to confront the Turkish invasion, amid widespread reports that a deal was being brokered by Russia, Assad’s principal backer, under which the SDF would hand over many of their locations to Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian forces.

As the situation on the ground continued to evolve, U.S. lawmakers called for imposing sanctions on Turkey, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration was ready to do so “at a moment’s notice.”

Mnuchin, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said he spoke Friday with the Turkish finance minister, and State Department officials are also in touch with their Turkish counterparts.

“They know what we will do if they don’t stop these activities,” he said.

Officials also indicated that a package of incentives offered to Turkey weeks ago -- including a massive trade deal and a White House visit for Erdogan next month -- would be off the table if Turkey did not retreat.

Trump had said last week that those inducements were still possible if Turkey quickly ended its Syria operations.

But after indications that Turkey intends to expand its attack “farther south than originally planned and to the west,” Esper said, speaking on CBS New’s “Face the Nation,” Trump ordered the withdrawal of the about 1,000 U.S. troops left in northern Syria late Saturday.

“We have American forces likely caught between two opposing advancing armies and it’s a very untenable situation,” Esper said.

“So I spoke with the president last night after discussions with the rest of the national security team, and he directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria.”

The defense secretary also cited signs that the SDF is “looking to cut a deal” with the Syrian regime and the Russian government to carry out a counterattack to the north.

Regime and Russian forces are located in Qamishli, a city at the far eastern end of the northern border strip Turkey has now claimed, and west of the Euphrates River.

The senior administration official said that longstanding Syria air deconfliction contacts with Russia were continuing, but that “we haven’t been in contact in any way shape or form to invite them in or share views on the Near East with them.”

Erdogan reacted angrily to the barrage of condemnations he has received from world leaders over the last few days, which has included threats of arms embargoes, economic sanctions and demands that Turkey sit down and negotiate with Syria’s Kurds to end the fighting in northern Syria.

Speaking in Istanbul, he singled out Germany and the United States.

“Yesterday at the German parliament, the minister of foreign affairs made a speech and he said they would stop selling weapons to Turkey,” Erdogan said.

“I just talked to Chancellor Merkel,” he added.

“I asked her to explain something to me: are we NATO allies or not?"

"Or is the terrorist organization now a NATO member?”

Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters to be terrorists allied with Turkish Kurds who have been involved in a violent campaign for autonomy in that country.

“I don’t know what sort of prime ministers or states people they are,” he said.

“How can you recommend sitting down at the same table with terrorists?”

Erdogan did not give any indication he intended to halt Turkey’s offensive.

Turkish forces would press 20 miles into Syria, he said.

“Until they leave the space, we will continue the operation,” he said, referring to the SDF.

“We will not let a terrorist state be established in northeast Syria.”

Trump has downplayed concerns about the crisis for days, saying that Turkey will be responsible for any Islamic State fighters who might break free in the chaos.

On Sunday, he tweeted before departing for his golf course in Virginia that it was “very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change” and accused “those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars” of pushing the United States to stay in the fight.

Trump added that the Kurds and Turks have been fighting for years, a reference to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.

“Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other,” Trump said.

“Let them!"

"We are monitoring the situation closely."

"Endless Wars!”

He added in a later tweet that he was working with members of Congress to impose sanctions on Turkey.

“There is great consensus on this,” Trump said.

“Turkey has asked that it not be done."

"Stay tuned!”

Top national security officials were described as in constant contact as events unfolded, with high level White House meetings planned for the afternoon.

Asked about Trump’s decision to play golf, the senior administration official said “I can assure you, the president has been earning his money on the Syrian account in the last eight days.”

But the Saturday night withdrawal announcement created confusion among U.S. officials with knowledge of operations in Syria about how the withdrawal may go.

One official, reached Sunday after Esper made his comments, said it is not clear that all the 1,000 U.S. troops based in northeastern Syria will come home.

It is possible, he said, that some could move farther south, to a safer location.

“It’s all very fluid right now,” he said.

At this time, the United States also intends to keep open its Tanf base in southeastern Syria, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Another U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it is likely that virtually all of the 1,000 troops will be sent home.

It is unlikely that any new outposts with U.S. troops will be built, the official said.

The departure of U.S. troops and the disintegrating security are already reshaping the region, with aid workers and civilians fleeing as SDF defenses crumble.

“The U.S. let us down by abandoning their positions and opening the door for Turkey to attack and massacre our people in northeast Syria,” said Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official in Qamishli.

He refused to confirm or deny Esper’s claim that the Kurds are poised to strike a deal with Russia and Damascus to confront Turkey but said negotiations have begun.

“This has obliged us to look for alternative options that could stop those massacres,” he said.

The withdrawal has begun after days of mixed messages in Washington that began with the White House announcing a week ago that Turkey planned to launch an offensive into northern Syria.

While the United States did not support the operation, U.S. troops would not stand in the way, U.S. officials said.

Turkey began the offensive Wednesday.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that the Pentagon had withdrawn a small number of service members — thought to be about 50 — from the border towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn.

Elsewhere, U.S. forces were still located with SDF fighters, he said.

Esper, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” said that Turkey was fully committed to its operation regardless what the United States did and that the administration did not want to go to war with a long-standing NATO ally.

Asked whether he thought Turkey seemed like much of an ally now, he said he did not.

“I think Turkey, the arc of their behavior over the past several years, has been terrible,” Esper said.

“I mean, they are spinning out of the Western orbit, if you will.”

The U.S. withdrawal is likely to force allies with forces on the ground in support of the U.S. mission against the Islamic State — principally France and Britain — to also considering pulling troops out.

Since Trump’s initial withdrawal from the Syrian-Turkish border was announced, Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have repeatedly reassured their French and British counterparts that the U.S. mission to secure the region against an Islamic State resurgence and continue stability operations was unchanged and that there were no immediate plans for U.S. troops to leave Syria.

Former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned last year after Trump ordered a large withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria that was later slowed, said in a separate interview Sunday morning on “Meet the Press” that is possible the Islamic State will regroup amid the chaos.

“We may want a war over; we may even declare it over,” Mattis said.

“You can pull your troops out as President Obama learned the hard way out of Iraq, but the ‘enemy gets the vote,’ we say in the military."

"And in this case, if we don’t keep the pressure on, then [the Islamic State] will resurge."

"It’s absolutely a given that they will come back.”

dan.lamothe@washpost.com

Sly reported from Beirut. Karen DeYoung and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.

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Re: TURKEY

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MARKETWATCH

"Syrian troops move north, setting up potential clash with Turkish forces"


By Associated Press

Published: Oct 14, 2019 4:49 p.m. ET

AKCAKALE, Turkey — Syrian government troops moved into towns and villages in northeastern Syria on Monday, including the flashpoint region of Manbij, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces advancing in the area as long-standing alliances in the region began to shift or crumble following the pullback of U.S. forces.

The Syrian military’s deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad’s government to help them fend off Turkey’s invasion, now in its sixth day.

Assad’s return to the region his troops abandoned in 2012 at the height of the Syrian civil war is a turning point in Syria’s eight-year civil war, giving yet another major boost to his government and its Russian backers and is like to endanger, if not altogether crush, the brief experiment in self-rule set up by Syria’s Kurds since the conflict began.

The rapidly changing situation was set in motion last week, when President Donald Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to step aside, clearing the way for an attack by Turkey, which regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorists.

Since 2014, the Kurds have fought alongside the U.S. in defeating the Islamic State in Syria, and Trump’s move was decried at home and abroad as a betrayal of an ally.

Faced with unrelenting criticism, Trump said Monday he was putting new sanctions on Turkey, halting trade negotiations and raising steel tariffs in an effort to pressure Ankara to stop its offensive.

In the past five days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 125 miles.

The offensive has displaced at least 130,000 people.

“Where is the United Nations?"

"Let them come see the blood of our children on the floor!"

"Why don’t they show up?” cried a medic at the Tal Tamr hospital, which received dozens of injured people from nearby Turkish shelling in recent days.

Abandoned in the middle of the battlefield, the Kurds turned to Assad and Russia for protection and announced Sunday night that Syrian government troops would be deployed in Kurdish-controlled towns and villages along the border to help repel the Turkish advance.

Kurdish official Aldar Khalil said in a statement that the aim of the agreement is for Syrian troops to be deployed along the border, except for the area between the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad, where Turkish troops are advancing.

He added that the autonomous authority will continue to run daily affairs in northeast Syria.

“There is an understanding between SDF and Damascus — a military agreement only,” said Badran Ciya Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

He has been in talks with Russians since the start, and he made his comments in an interview with The Associated Press.

Syrian state media broadcast repeated footage of government forces entering northern towns and villages with residents chanting slogans in support of Assad, while others rushed to hug the soldiers.

In a northern village, residents welcomed the troops by showering them with rice, an Arab gesture of welcome.

In another village, dozens of young men rode motorcycles as some waved posters of Assad.

“We are going back to our normal positions that are at the border,” said a Syrian officer, as embattled Kurdish authorities invited the government to retake towns and villages in the north.

“May God protect the army!” residents responded.

The dramatic events are a crushing blow to the dreams of Syria’s Kurds who had built up a degree of autonomy that was unthinkable before the war, when they were an oppressed minority by the Assad family rule.

The ethnic group grew from an underdog in Syria to a prestigious group that controls about 30% of Syrian territory, working hand in hand with the Americans to defeat the Islamic State group.

A return by Assad’s forces to their region is a major shift in Syria’s long-running civil war, further cementing Assad’s hold over the ravaged country.

The Syrian troops arrived in the northern province of Raqqa aboard buses and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns.

Troops moved into the towns of Tal Tamr, about 12 miles from the Turkish border, Ein Issa and Tabqa, known for its dam on the Euphrates River and a nearby air base of the same name.

They later entered the Kurdish-held town of Manbij, in a race with Turkey-backed opposition fighters advancing in the same direction.

The Manbij region is home to U.S. outposts that were set up in 2017 to patrol the tense frontiers between Turkish-controlled areas and the Kurdish-held side of northern Syria.

A U.S. official said troops are still in the town, preparing to leave.

Earlier, Syrian fighters backed by Turkey said they began an offensive alongside Turkish troops to capture Manbij, which is on the western flank of the Euphrates River, broadening their campaign east of the river.

Mustafa Sejari, an official with the Turkey-backed fighters, tweeted: “The battle of Manbij has begun.”

Turkey’s private NTV television reported that Turkish special forces and commandos began advancing toward Manbij in the afternoon.

CNN-Turk also mentioned the attack, reporting that the sound of clashes could be heard.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled earlier in the day his military was ready to begin the assault Manbij, with a goal of returning the city to Arab populations that he said were its rightful owners.

Speaking later in Baku, Azerbaijan, Erdogan said Turkey’s military offensive into northeast Syria is as “vital” to Turkey as its 1974 military intervention in Cyprus, which split the island.

Erdogan also made clear Turkey would not halt its offensive despite the widespread condemnation.

The military action by Ankara sets up a potential clash between Turkey and Syria and raises the specter of a resurgent Islamic State group as the U.S. relinquishes any remaining influence in northern Syria to Assad and his chief backer, Russia.

Turkey warned its NATO allies in Europe and the United States not to stand in its way.

Trump said the roughly 1,000 U.S. troops he ordered out of Syria would remain in the Middle East to prevent a resurgence of the IS threat.

The European Union unanimously condemned Turkey’s military move and asked all 28 of its member states to stop selling arms to Ankara, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told the AP.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian and Turkish officials have remained in close contact.

Russia appeared to be working on de-confliction between Turkish and Syrian troops.

Erdogan has already said Turkey will not negotiate with the Syrian Kurdish fighters, saying they have links to a long-running Kurdish insurgency within its own borders.

Syria’s state-run news agency SANA said government forces planned to “confront the Turkish aggression,” without giving further details.

Photos posted by SANA showed several vehicles and a small number of troops in Tal Tamr, a predominantly Assyrian Christian town that was once held by IS before it was retaken by Kurdish-led forces.

Many Syrian Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Syria’s prewar population of 23 million, left for Europe in the past 20 years, with the flight gathering speed since the conflict began in March 2011.

Heavy fighting on Sunday reached a Kurdish-run camp for displaced persons in Ein Issa.

The camp is home to about 12,000 people, including around 950 wives and children of IS fighters, and hundreds are believed to have escaped amid the chaos.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/syria ... latestnews
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