America forsakes Syria’s Kurds in a ceasefire deal with Turkey
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got nearly everything he wantedOct 18th 2019MERELY A WEEK into its offensive against American-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, victory for Turkey came not on the battlefield, but at the negotiating table, courtesy of diplomats from Washington. On October 17th an American delegation led by Mike Pence, the vice-president, walked out of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s palace in Ankara with a ceasefire agreement that read like a list of concessions to Turkey. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, appeared in front of the cameras shortly thereafter. “The American side accepted the legitimacy of our operation and targets,” he said. “We got what we wanted.”Under the deal, the Kurdish fighters, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), are expected to withdraw to at least 30km from the border while Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies hold their fire for 120 hours. In return, America would shelve the sanctions it had imposed against Mr Erdogan’s government on October 14th. A permanent truce would then take hold. The Kurds would also surrender the heavy weapons they received from the Americans to wage war against Islamic State (IS), and dismantle their fortifications. The withdrawal would open the way for Turkish troops to carve out a buffer zone in northern Syria stretching from the border with Iraq to the Euphrates River.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address