Turkey and Russia announce deal to withdraw all Kurdish forces from Syrian border

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin emerged from marathon talks in Sochi with an agreement - AFP
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin emerged from marathon talks in Sochi with an agreement - AFP

Turkey and Russia announced last night they had reached a deal to avoid a return to fullscale fighting in northeast Syria, just hours before a US-brokered ceasefire between Turkish and Kurdish forces was due to expire.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin emerged from marathon talks in Sochi with an agreement that would see all Kurdish forces pull back 30km from the Syrian border over the next six days.

Russia and Turkey will then launch joint military patrols in the area to ensure the deal is being implemented. There was no immediate comment from Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the deal.

But if the agreement holds it means Turkey will not restart its military offensive, which many feared would resume as soon as an earlier ceasefire ended at 10pm on Tuesday.

"According to this agreement, Turkey and Russia will not allow any separatist agenda on Syrian territory," Mr Erdoğan said.

The talks in Sochi underscore how quickly Russia has replaced the US as the main powerbroker in northeast Syria in the days since Donald Trump, the US president, pulled American forces out of the region.

Russian forces will now stand guard in areas that only a few weeks were ago were being patrolled by US troops.

The evening agreement between Russia and Turkey capped a dramatic day as the world counted down the hours until the end of the ceasefire brokered last week by US vice president Mike Pence.

The US said earlier in the day that it believed that Kurdish forces had fulfilled their obligations to withdraw from a key 120km stretch of the border and warned Turkey that it would impose sanctions if the Turkish military resumed attacks.

The Russian-Turkish deal appears to expand on the earlier American agreement and ensure that Kurdish forces will leave the entire length of the border.

Turkey will maintain control in areas it has already seized while Russian and Syrian regime forces will hold the rest of the border.

The agreement also states that the Kurds will withdraw from two holdout towns in western Syria, Kobani and Tel Rifaat, which Turkey has been trying to dislodge them from them for more than a year.  

Sergey Shoygu, the Russian defence minister, said up to 500 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) members had escaped from Kurdish-run prisons in northeast Syria amid the chaos of the Turkish offensive.

US troops are withdrawing from northeast Syria - Credit: DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
US troops are withdrawing from northeast Syria Credit: DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Meanwhile, confusion over the US plan to withdraw forces from Syria deepened on Tuesday after Iraq’s government said the retreating troops did not have permission to stay in Iraq.

“There is no permission granted for these forces to stay inside Iraq,” the Iraqi military said.

The comment appeared to contradict claims by the Pentagon that the roughly 1,000 soldiers would stay in Iraq to continue fighting Isil.  Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, said he would try to smooth the issue during a visit to Iraq and added that the additional American forces did not plan “to stay in Iraq interminably”.

There was a bleak reminder of the threat from Isil inside Iraq when it emerged Tuesday that a senior Iraqi police commander had been killed in an ambush by jihadist fighters.

Bashar al-Assad visited his forces in Idlib for the first time in years
Bashar al-Assad visited his forces in Idlib for the first time in years

Bashar al-Assad made a rare trip outside Damascus to visit his troops on the front line in southern Idlib, where Syrian regime forces are battling against jihadists and rebels to take back the last opposition-held province in Syria.

The visit is the first time Assad has stepped foot in the province in years and marks his growing confidence after several weeks of good news for Damascus.

While his forces are make slow progress in Idlib, they were handed an unexpected victory in northeast Syria after Kurdish forces invited them in to confront Turkey.

Assad took aim at the Turkish president during the trip to Idlib, saying: “Erdogan is a thief and is now stealing our land.”

He vowed to continue his assault on Idlib, which is home to around 3 million civilians, and said a victory in the provice would help “decisively end chaos and terrorism in all of Syria”.