Turkey-Russia patrols will verify Syria Kurdish forces’ withdrawal: presidency

Turkish-Russian joint patrols will verify whether Syrian Kurdish forces have withdrawn from a proposed safe zone in northern Syria under a deal reached between Ankara and Moscow, the Turkish presidency said on Tuesday.

“The time is up,” Fahrettin Altun, the presidency’s communications director, wrote on Twitter.

“We will establish, through joint patrols, whether or not the terrorists have actually withdrawn,” he said, referring to the Kurdish YPG militia.

Under the agreement reached last week in the Black Sea resort of Sochi between Turkey and Russia, a 150-hour deadline was given for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons to be withdrawn from a zone extending 30 kilometres (18 miles) back from the Turkish border.

That deadline expired at 1500 GMT.

Russia earlier said that Kurdish forces in northern Syria had withdrawn as planned.

“The withdrawal of armed units from territory where a security corridor should be created has been completed ahead of time,” Russian news agencies quoted Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying on a visit to Armenia.

Under the Sochi deal, Turkish and Russian joint patrols were meant to start after the 150-hour deadline expired.

The patrols were to be in two zones stretching 10 kilometres to the east and west of the area of Turkey’s current Operation Peace Spring.

Ankara says the YPG is a terror group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has waged a bloody campaign against the Turkish state since 1984.

The Turkish military, together with its proxies in Syria, launched an operation on October 9 to clear YPG forces from areas near its border and create a safe zone to repatriate some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currrently in Turkey.