Κουρδιστάν (Κουρδικό Ζήτημα, Αμπντουλλάχ Οτζαλάν) , Ρωσία , Συρία , Τουρκία 23 Οκτωβρίου 2019

New York Times: Πούτιν και Ερντογάν ανακοινώνουν σχέδιο για τη βορειοανατολική Συρία – Ενισχυμένη η ρωσική επιρροή

Ο ηγέτης της Ρωσίας που φιλοξένησε τον Τούρκο ομόλογό του κατέστησε τη Μόσχα ως ισχυρό παίκτη στη Μέση Ανατολή, αναφέρει η αμερικανική εφημερίδα

SOCHI, Russia —
His jets patrol Syrian skies. His military is expanding operations at
the main naval base in Syria. He is forging closer ties to Turkey. He
and his Syrian allies are moving into territory vacated by the United
States.

And on Tuesday,
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia played host to President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for more than six hours of talks on how they
and other regional players will divide control of Syria, devastated
by eight years of civil war.

The negotiations
cemented Mr. Putin’s strategic advantage: Russian and Turkish
troops will take joint control over a vast swath of formerly
Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria. The change strengthens the
rapid expansion of Russian influence in Syria at the expense of the
United States and its Kurdish former allies.

Under terms of the
agreement, Syrian Kurdish forces have six days to retreat more than
20 miles from the border, abandoning land that they had controlled
uncontested until earlier this month — when their protector, the
American military, suddenly began to withdraw from the region. The
Syrian Kurdish leadership did not immediately respond to the demand.

“Only if Syria’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity is respected can a long-lasting
and solid stabilization in Syria be achieved,” Mr. Putin said
alongside Mr. Erdogan after the meeting.

“It is important
that our Turkish partners share this approach,” Mr. Putin added.
“The Turks will have to defend peace and calm on the border
together with the Syrians. This can only be done in the atmosphere of
mutual respect and cooperation.”

Mr. Putin has
emerged as the dominant force in Syria and a major power broker in
the broader Middle East — a status showcased by Mr. Erdogan’s
hastily arranged trip to the Russian president’s summer home in
Sochi. And it looks increasingly clear that Russia, which rescued the
government of President al-Assad with airstrikes over the last four
years, will be the arbiter of the power balance there.

As President Trump
questions American alliances and troop deployments around the world,
Russia, like China, has been flexing its muscles, eager to fill the
power vacuum left by a more isolationist United States. In Syria,
both Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan have seized opportunities created by
Mr. Trump’s sudden withdrawal.

Mr. Erdogan had long
wanted go to war against the Kurdish-led forces that control
northeast Syria but he dared not, as long as the Kurds’ American
allies were stationed there. After Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw
American forces from the area, Mr. Erdogan launched an invasion.

The Sochi meeting
began a few hours before the end of an American-brokered truce
between Turkish and Kurdish forces in Syria, where Mr. Erdogan says
his troops have seized more than 900 square miles of territory since
invading on Oct. 6.

“The U.S. is still
the 500-pound gorilla,” said Howard Eissenstat, a professor of
Middle East history at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. “If
the U.S. decided that ‘issue X’ was a primary concern to its
national security, there would be very little that anybody in the
region could do about it.”

But with the United
States increasingly removing itself from the picture — as
symbolized in the Russian news media by the images of abandoned
washing machines and unopened cans of Coca-Cola left behind in the
chaotic withdrawal — it was Russia’s consent Mr. Erdogan needed
on Tuesday to solidify and extend his gains.

“Before, Turkey
could play the U.S. against Russia and Russia against the U.S.,”
said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign
Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based research group. “Now that’s no
longer the case, and Russia has shaped up to be Turkey’s only real
counterpart in Syria.”

The Sochi meeting
looked to be a culmination of Mr. Putin’s yearslong strategy of
taking advantage of Western divisions to build closer ties with
Turkey, a NATO member and long a key United States ally, and to
increase Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.

As the United States
and Western Europe vacillated in their approach to Syria — to the
frustration of Turkey and other Middle Eastern powers — Russia
chose to protect its ally, Mr. al-Assad, and stuck with him despite
fierce criticism from the West that the Syrian ruler was a brutal
despot.

The upshot, Russians
now say, is that while their country lacks the West’s economic
might, it can be counted on to keep its word.

“Some people are
furious again, some people are jealous and some people are drawn to
power,” Dmitri Kiselyov, the prominent host of a news program on
state-controlled Russian television, told viewers Sunday night.
“Whatever the case, Erdogan is flying to Russia to meet with
Putin.”

Russian television
showed Mr. Putin looking relaxed as he delivered his opening remarks
in Sochi, leaning back with his hands clasped easily over an armrest.
Mr. Erdogan, by contrast, sat up straight as he eyed his Russian
counterpart.

Mr. Putin, who
relishes chances to drive wedges into Western alliances, has drawn
closer to Mr. Erdogan, whose relations with Europe and the United
States have been rocky. They have met eight times this year,
according to Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser.

In July, Turkey
defied Western warnings and began taking delivery of a Russian
antiaircraft missile system, prompting the United States to cancel
Turkey’s purchase of American-made fighter jets. NATO had warned
that the purchase could reveal Western technological secrets to
Russia, and that the Russian weapons were incompatible with the
alliance’s systems.

Mr. Putin has also
cultivated ties with the United States’ closest ally in the region,
Israel, and its bitterest adversary, Iran, another supporter of Mr.
al-Assad.

Russia “doesn’t
have the economic or military capabilities the U.S. has,” Mr.
Eissenstat said, “but it has been very savvy about using its power
in limited and effective means.”

Until this month,
Kurdish fighters had managed to carve out their own autonomous region
in northeast Syria, free of government control, amid the chaos of the
war. They greatly expanded their territory from 2015 onward, when
they became the principal Syrian partner of an American-led coalition
working to defeat militants from the Islamic State militant group,
also known as ISIS.

As Kurdish fighters
won ISIS-held land, they took over its governance, eventually
establishing control over roughly a quarter of Syria.

But Mr. Erdogan
viewed the Kurdish militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, as
a threat to Turkish national security, since the group is an offshoot
of a guerrilla movement that has waged a decades-long insurgency in
Turkey.

As a result, Mr.
Erdogan sought to create a buffer zone along the entire length of the
Turkish-Syrian border, roughly 20 miles deep, to keep Kurdish
fighters from getting within mortar range of Turkey.

On Tuesday, Mr.
Erdogan got Mr. Putin to agree to parts of this plan: Under the
agreement, Russian and Turkish troops will jointly patrol most of the
Syrian-Turkish border, a stretch roughly 260 miles long and six miles
deep. Kurdish forces will have to withdraw even further — to an
area 20 miles from the border.

The Turkish
government and its Syrian Arab proxies will also get to keep control
of a deeper area of borderland, roughly 75 miles long and 20 miles
deep, captured from Kurdish forces this month.

But in exchange, Mr.
Erdogan has had to give up hopes of exerting greater control over a
much wider territory — and agree to allow Mr. al-Assad’s forces
back to a border they abandoned several years ago.

Mr. Erdogan was also
rebuked by Mr. Putin for risking a revival of the Islamic State.
Distracted by the invasion, Kurdish fighters have been unable to
carry out anti-ISIS operations, and several ISIS militants have
escaped Kurdish-run jails.

“It is important
to make sure,” Mr. Putin said as Mr. Erdogan stood beside him,
“that members of terrorist organizations, including ISIS, whose
militants are kept by Kurdish armed formations and are trying to
escape, would not use the opportunity created by the actions of
Turkish forces.”

Mr. Putin also
called Mr. al-Assad after the meeting to fill the Syrian leader in,
the Kremlin said in a statement, and the Syrian leader “supported
the decisions made.”

United States
military vehicles near Bardarash, Iraq, on Monday after withdrawing
from northern Syria.CreditSafin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty
Images

As American troops
crossed the border from Syria into Iraq this week, the Iraqi
government faced questions about whether the withdrawal was
camouflage for an American buildup in Iraq. The United States
military has a large camp in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan,
and the troops are going there until arrangements are made for them
to move on.

Defense Secretary
Mark T. Esper seemed mindful of the Iraqis’ concerns on Tuesday
when he said, on a stop in Saudi Arabia, “The aim isn’t to stay
in Iraq interminably. The aim is to pull our soldiers out and
eventually get them back home.” Mr. Esper also said he will discuss
the matter with Iraqi officials when he visits Baghdad on Wednesday.