Jan 26, 2017

US President Donald Trump’s pledge to order safe zones in Syria has stirred a mix of hope and concern in Turkey, which has long advocated the establishment of a US-backed no-fly zone in its war-wracked southern neighbor.

“We have seen the US president’s request for conducting a study [on safe zones]. What’s important are the results of this study and what kind of recommendation will come out,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu told reporters.

“Setting up safe zones is something Turkey has advocated from the start. The best example is Jarablus,” Muftuoglu observed. He was referring to the first town on the Turkish border to be liberated from the Islamic State by a Turkish-led rebel force last year in an ongoing offensive called Operation Euphrates Shield.

Trump said on Jan. 25 that he will “absolutely do safe zones in Syria” for Syrians displaced by the six-year conflict. But he did not elaborate on where in Syria he envisaged establishing them. The Pentagon and the State Department have come up with such plans in the past, though they were never approved as they would have required putting significant numbers of US forces on the ground and in harm’s way.

But the situation has changed dramatically since Russia intervened in Syria in September and the United States deployed several hundred special operations forces in the Kurdish-controlled northeast of the country to jointly battle IS.