Turkey and Russia Resume Joint Patrols in Northern Syria
Turkey and Russia have resumed joint military patrols in northern Syria after nearly a year-long hiatus, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Saturday.
Initially suspended in October of last year, the patrols took place in the Operation Peace Spring area, a 30-kilometer (19-mile) wide strip of land captured from Kurdish fighters in 2019.
“It is planned to continue the United Land Patrol … to ensure the security of our country’s borders and the civilian population in the region (and) to establish stability in northern Syria,” the ministry said in its statement.
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The renewed patrols come as Ankara seeks to mend its relations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime is kept afloat by Moscow. Assad has indicated that he will only meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the removal of Turkish troops from Syria and Ankara’s support of what Damascus calls terrorists.
As part of Ankara’s years-long counterinsurgency campaign against Kurdish forces across Iraq and Syria, the ministry’s statement also specified that the operation would seek to identify YPG “checkpoints, headquarters and military structures.”
Turkey views the YPG, or People’s Defense Units, a predominantly Kurdish subunit of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as a terrorist organization due to its links with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
However, the United States-backed SDF has been a strong Western partner in the region, particularly in the fight against the Islamic State. US support for the SDF and its constituent Kurdish units has long been a source of tension between Ankara and Washington.
