- Joined
- Sep 20, 2016
The U.S. and Russia have found themselves teaming up for the first time in the war in Syria -- against a country both call an ally: Turkey.
The U.S. and Russia moved this week to block a threatened drive by Turkey to seize Manbij, a town in northern Syria about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Turkish border. A U.S. deployment and a Russian-brokered deal with Syrian forces created buffer zones that headed off any Turkish campaign against the Kurdish forces who hold the town -- seen by Washington as key allies against Islamic State and by Turkey as terrorists.Russian President Vladimir Putin is a central player thanks to his military campaign, but he must keep allies like Syria and Iran on his side even as tries to cooperate with the U.S. and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes to Moscow on Thursday with his defense minister for talks with Putin.
"This is a unique circumstance when the U.S. and Russia have found themselves thrown together against Turkey because of the Kurds, who are directly sponsored by Washington and get Russian support too," said Alexander Shumilin, head of the Middle East Conflict Center at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, a government-run research group in Moscow.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his country was seeking a "trilateral mechanism" to clear the area of "terrorist groups." In Manbij, "the U.S. is raising a flag, Russia is raising a flag nearby, things have turned into a flag competition," Yildirim said in an interview with ATV television.
In a bid to lower the tensions, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Turkey's Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar met in the southern Turkish city of Antalya on Tuesday.
"It is a measure of the success that forces are having in countering the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that the conversation is necessary," the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement. It noted that areas like Manbij have become "a crowded battlespace" and the proximity of the various forces had created "a dangerous situation."
The U.S.-led coalition "has taken this deliberate action to reassure coalition members and partner forces, deter aggression and keep the focus on defeating ISIS," spokesman Col. John Dorrian said on Twitter.
The U.S. and Russian moves leave Turkey with "no more room to maneuver," said Faysal Itani, an analyst with the Atlantic Council in Washington. That will enable a Kurdish-led operation to capture Raqqa and the Syrian government to deploy its forces, too, in the area, he said.
http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-russia-counter-erdogan-in-syria-as-kurds-get-shield-1.457627#.WMF7kuxFw0P
The U.S. and Russia moved this week to block a threatened drive by Turkey to seize Manbij, a town in northern Syria about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Turkish border. A U.S. deployment and a Russian-brokered deal with Syrian forces created buffer zones that headed off any Turkish campaign against the Kurdish forces who hold the town -- seen by Washington as key allies against Islamic State and by Turkey as terrorists.Russian President Vladimir Putin is a central player thanks to his military campaign, but he must keep allies like Syria and Iran on his side even as tries to cooperate with the U.S. and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes to Moscow on Thursday with his defense minister for talks with Putin.
"This is a unique circumstance when the U.S. and Russia have found themselves thrown together against Turkey because of the Kurds, who are directly sponsored by Washington and get Russian support too," said Alexander Shumilin, head of the Middle East Conflict Center at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, a government-run research group in Moscow.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his country was seeking a "trilateral mechanism" to clear the area of "terrorist groups." In Manbij, "the U.S. is raising a flag, Russia is raising a flag nearby, things have turned into a flag competition," Yildirim said in an interview with ATV television.
In a bid to lower the tensions, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Turkey's Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar met in the southern Turkish city of Antalya on Tuesday.
"It is a measure of the success that forces are having in countering the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that the conversation is necessary," the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement. It noted that areas like Manbij have become "a crowded battlespace" and the proximity of the various forces had created "a dangerous situation."
The U.S.-led coalition "has taken this deliberate action to reassure coalition members and partner forces, deter aggression and keep the focus on defeating ISIS," spokesman Col. John Dorrian said on Twitter.
The U.S. and Russian moves leave Turkey with "no more room to maneuver," said Faysal Itani, an analyst with the Atlantic Council in Washington. That will enable a Kurdish-led operation to capture Raqqa and the Syrian government to deploy its forces, too, in the area, he said.
http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-russia-counter-erdogan-in-syria-as-kurds-get-shield-1.457627#.WMF7kuxFw0P