Putin, Erdogan Hold Talks On Idlib Province, Kurds Ahead Of U.S. Troop Pull-out

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Moscow, as the two discussed measures to stabilize Syria’s increasingly chaotic Idlib Province. Despite past attempts to set up a so-called “de-escalation zone” in the northwest region, conditions on the ground reportedly are rapidly deteriorating with the area under the near-full control of al-Qai’da-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Comprised largely of fighters from the former Nusra Front, the organization is classified as a terrorist organization by both Russia and Turkey. The two countries previously threatened to launch a military operation to dislodge the group—which only a few months ago controlled about sixty percent of Idlib—unless it agreed to disarm. That demand clearly never materialized, with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s expanded reach coming at the expense of the Turkish-backed National Army, an amalgamation of tens of thousands of troops that essentially form a collective buffer along the Syrian-Turkish border. Also topping the Putin-Erdogan agenda was the prospective withdrawal from Syria of American forces and the creation of a 20-mile “safe zone” along the northern frontier in which Kurdish forces would be barred from operating. Ankara considers these YPG units an extension of the banned PKK that has waged a decades-long bloody insurgency against Turkey. The U.S-allied YPG fighters were the most cohesive and effective ground force in the battle against the Islamic State, a reality that recently prompted President Donald Trump to warn Erdogan to not launch a campaign against the Kurds.