Some notes from my lives:
After six hours of intense negotiations, the presidents of Russia and Turkey reached an agreement on Tuesday October 22 in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The essence of which is to maintain the status quo and provide 150 hours to solve a new problem - the withdrawal of all Kurdish forces from the border with Turkey throughout its entire length.
Today’s meeting here in Sochi, came just hours before the clock runs out on the cease-fire agreed between Turkey and the United States. Under that agreement, Turkish troops and their allied Syrian fighters stopped fighting for five days, on condition the Kurdish fighters holding the area withdraw.
The agreement has largely met Turkey’s aims, but left the Kurds feeling betrayed by Washington, which is currently pulling U.S. troops out of the area.
The talks between President Vladimir Putin and Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can be crucial to the outcome of Turkey’s latest incursion into northern Syria , and to the broader Syrian war.
Moscow’s public reaction to the announced U.S. departure from Northern Syria was a combination of glee that Washington intends to leave, doubt that the withdrawal is real, and reservations about Turkey’s subsequent incursion.
As much as Putin wants the United States out, he has been trying to open the next phrase of Syria diplomacy for months now, with the aim of brokering a resolution on his terms—namely, ending the fighting while ensuring that Bashar al-Assad stays in power.
Accordingly, as Ankara began its offensive against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) two weeks ago, Russia deployed a small contingent of military police to serve as a buffer, then began negotiations with the YPG and the Assad regime. Shortly after, Assad’s troops moved into Kurdish-controlled areas such as Manbij, placing local Russian forces and proxies in the middle of a potential clash between the Turkish and Syrian militaries.
Putin has long been careful to conduct the Syria intervention in a way that does not get Russia bogged down, but the ghost of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is always looming in the background.
Meanwhile, a recent Levada Center poll indicated that 55 percent of the Russian public would prefer to end the intervention altogether. To ease this pressure while still shaping events in a manner favorable to Moscow, Putin has worked to build leverage over Erdoğan for years, from selling him S-400 missile defense systems, to building the country’s first nuclear power plant, to expanding how much Russian media outlets such as Sputnik broadcast in Turkey.
From this perspective, it is telling that the start of Erdoğan’s campaign in Syria coincided with a new Russian-Turkish agreement to conduct trade in their national currencies.
Putin’s leverage in Sochi will also be augmented by the fact that regional actors have grudgingly come to view Moscow as a more reliable partner than Washington, thanks to Moscow’s shuffle diplomacy in the Middle East.
Taking advantage of this perception and the latest U.S. withdrawal, Moscow will likely offer Erdoğan a broader bargain on Syria during the Sochi talks, perhaps pledging to fold the YPG under Assad’s control in return for Ankara recognizing him as Syria’s legitimate leader. Putin may also ask Turkey to vacate Syrian territories that it currently occupies; in response, Erdoğan will likely ask Assad to repatriate some of the nearly four million Syrian refugees who still reside in Turkey.
Other tension points may undermine the future of Idlib. The Assad regime and Russia continue to target this last rebel-held border province with brutal attacks that threaten to send another 2-3 million civilians fleeing into Turkey, potentially creating another refugee crisis for Ankara and Europe similar to that of 2015.
