Turkish-American Talks

Turkey has recently come out with a supposed road map of the Manbij deal that I predicted in https://kalashandtea.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/afrin-2-2-18/ and discussed in https://kalashandtea.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/syria-2-16-18/.

The details of the supposed roadmap are in https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkey-us-manbij-deal-foresees-3-phase-plan/1161008 but they are not finalized until the June 4th meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. The Manbij talks were originally a project under Tillerson but his firing and replacement for Pompeo heavily delayed them.

Reactions have been expected, with the US denying reaching any deal but explaining the roadmap existences and is being worked on, while the SDF Manbij Military Spox Shravan Darwish denied claims of the SDF already pulling out but acknowledge the talks existence between the US and Turkey.

Assad:

In an exclusive interview Assad stated “There are 2 options for the SDF: We started to open doors for negotiations now, because the majority of them are Syrians. But if the negotiations fail Syrian Army will take the areas back by force” and received the response of “We are ready for negotiations with the regime and we do not seek to solve the problems with war” by the SDF.

What does this mean?

Explained more in https://kalashandtea.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/syria-2-16-18/.

These events give us an insight into the actors in Syria are handling the contradictions of the geopolitics surrounding the conflict. The US is trying to balance it’s commitments to Turkey and the SDF, however will eventually have to turn to Turkey as it’s regionally, strategically, and long-term more important than the SDF, however in the short-term has to keep the SDF in order to block over a third of Syria from full Assad influence and because of that constantly makes statements almost contradictory to themselves, reassuring both Turkey and the SDF. The SDF has to balance relations with the US and Syria as while the US betrayed them in Afrin etc it’s at the very least a short-term insurance against full on Turkish invasion but with the inevitable US turn to Turkey, will have to turn to the Assad camp and specifically Russia who holds the key to Syria’s airspace if that are to insure their survival. However this is something they failed at in Afrin and the cost for going to Assad will not be cheap. And among all of this of course Assad realizes this and suggested and confirmed negotiations with the SDF and even hinted on the details that being the US’s presences being the key to them. There is a high probability of the situation folding out with the Manbij deal happening and in what would be another back and forth mess of negotiations, statements, etc a SDF deal involving the succession of SDF-held Dier Ez Zor and the exposition of US troops in exchange for Russian-Assad protection and a political solution being probably autonomy/federalism for them, the SDF while maybe facing some demilitarization will fight to the teeth to keep it’s army as insurance in a deal with Assad and has been building it up despite Da’esh/ISIS’s downfall as bargaining leverage.