Turkey, US forces conduct second joint patrol in Syria

Turkish and US forces have conducted their second joint ground patrol along the Syrian-Turkish border today, in preparation for the establishment of a planned safe zone in northern Syria.

A convoy of four armoured vehicles belonging to the Turkish armed forces from the south-eastern province of Sanliurfa crossed the Syrian border to meet with the US military convoy, aiming to conduct the land patrol in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad.

The first joint patrol between the two countries’ armed forces took place on 9 September, a month after an agreement on the safe zone was finally struck following weeks of talks in which Turkey pushed for the safe zone’s establishment in the model of an agreement with the United States, which is allied to and holds sway over the Kurdish militias.

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Throughout the talks between the two countries, Turkey warned that it would conduct its own military operation into northern Syria and establish the zone itself, prompting the US to eventually agree to work together and set up a joint cooperation centre near the Syrian border.

The reason for Turkey’s insistence on the establishment of the safe zone and its potential resort to a third military operation into northern Syria was the presence of Kurdish militias such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), currently entrenched east of the Euphrates River in particular, which Turkey sees as a national security threat. This, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saw it, would be to achieve two things at once: the clearing of the Kurdish militias from the border region and the placement of around one million refugees in that safe zone, providing displaced Syrians with a new home in their country. As Erdogan stated in a speech this month: “Our goal is to settle at least a million of our Syrian brothers and sisters in a safe zone along the border 450 kilometres long.”

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The cooperation with the US, however, has not been beneficial for Turkey: its demands for the zone to be 30 kilometres deep into Syria and its desire to control it with its own forces have not been respected by the US so far, and many on the Turkish side have expressed their fears that it will turn out to be another Manbij scenario – where the US dominates the situation and Turkey is side-lined. Erdogan made it clear last week that Turkey will not accept a repeat of such a situation, stating that “We will never tolerate a delay like we saw in Manbij. The process must advance rapidly.”

Earlier this month, Erdogan lamented that another safe zone which was supposed to be established in Idlib province is nothing more than a name due to the Syrian regime and Russia’s air and land assault on the area, and warned that if this new safe zone is under threat of failure and Turkey is not granted full access within the next few weeks, then it will advance in northern Syria to implement its own plan.