On October 8, the Turkish Armed Forces announced that they had carried out strikes on the Syrian-Iraqi border in order to prevent Kurdish groups from using the route to reinforce their positions in northeastern Syria. Ankara expects that units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which it recognizes as a terrorist group, could be re-deployed from northern Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border.
https://twitter.com/RojavaNetwork/status/1181485376747294720
Almost immediately after first Turkish strikes, the SDF leadership announced that it is ready to consider resuming talks with Damascus, and therefore Russia.
“If America vacates the area and especially the border area for certain we, as a self administration and as the SDF, will be forced to study all the available options,” an official in the Kurdish-controlled ‘administration of northeastern Syria’, Badran Jia Kurd told Reuters.
“At that time we may hold talks with Damascus or the Russian side to fill the void or block the Turkish attack, so this may develop and there could be meetings and contacts in case of a vacuum,” he said.
Earlier, the group sabotaged all Damascus attempts to settle the existing differences through political measures by demanding the Syrian government to de-facto recognize and fund a de-facto independent state with own military within Syria. Now, when the SDF’s key ally has once again appeared to be not ready to sacrifice its geo-strategic interests to create a Kurdish state in Syria, the SDF is once again seeking negotiations with the ‘bloody Assad regime.’
If the Turkish military really launches a military operation against the SDF in northeastern Syria, the negotiation position of the group’s leadership may soften even further.
