ANKARA: While all eyes are now on the unfolding developments in Libya and the East Mediterranean, Turkey’s pro-government daily Yeni Safak reported significant changes in the deployment of foreign forces in northern Syria.
The US is setting up two new military posts in Syria, one in Himo village in Qamishli, and the other in Qahtaniya, to boost its footprint along the Turkish-Syrian border.
US troops, increasingly, find themselves neighbors to Russian soldiers and Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
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The presence of the US forces, 600 according to US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, is supposedly to help the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia against Daesh, and to monitor the area. They will also protect local residents and key infrastructure, such as oil fields, from external attacks.
In accordance with a US-brokered deal, YPG forces have withdrawn 30 km from the border to allow Turkey to set up a so-called “safe zone” using members of the anti-regime Syrian National Army (SNA).
In the meantime, Russia, deploying troops to bases previously evacuated by US forces, has expanded its presence around Qamishli.
Alexey Khlebnikov, an analyst at the Russian International Affairs Council, said Turkey considers the YPG the Syrian extension of the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkish state. It would therefore not be pleased at US support for the militia.
“The Kurdish issue is the most important for Turkey in Syria, (but) it is unlikely that Ankara can do much militarily, with Russian, US and pro-Assad forces present,” he told Arab News.
Human Rights Watch recently claimed it had found “damming evidence” of Syrian soldiers conducting summary executions, pillaging and other war crimes.
“Continued reports of atrocities by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army that now controls the area also raise fears that Turkish proxies are committing a form of ethnic cleansing by relocating people of Arab descent into the region, while preventing the Kurdish population from returning,” Lara Seligman recently wrote in Foreign Policy.
Despite continued reports about the wrongdoings of the SNA in Syria, Khlebnikov said Ankara would not stop backing it.
Navvar Saban, a military analyst at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies in Istanbul, said the continuing presence of the US in the area would continue while key assets remained under threat.
“Now the main concern of the American forces is to protect this (area). This is now the main goal of these new bases. They also want to send a message that they won’t abandon the Kurds with a complete withdrawal,” he told Arab News.
Turkey aims to settle at least one million Syrian refugees in northern Syria following the establishment of the infrastructure in the “safe zone.”
In the meantime, up to 50,000 Syrians are on their way to the Turkish border from the northwestern rebel-held province of Idlib, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Thursday, with Russian and regime attacks pushing more and more refugees out of the province.
At least 24 civilians were reportedly killed by air strikes and artillery fire in Idlib on Tuesday.
