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Ankara and Moscow have come to terms that a roadmap on Syria’s Manbij should be implemented in line with the accords between the US and Turkey, Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin stressed.
“You should remember that the units of [Syrian President Bashar Assad] regime are located outside Manbij near Arima…We have reached an agreement with Russia that the roadmap on Manbij should be implemented in the way we had agreed on with the United States,” the spokesman told the state-run news agency Anadolu.
Earlier, the Turkish military stated that the Turkish and US military at the talks in Stuttgart in June agreed on an action plan on withdrawing the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and affilated forces from Manbij.
In September, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that the implementation of the roadmap was not as effective as it should be. Later he called on the YPG to leave the town. In November, the Turkish and US military started conducting joint patrols north of Manbij. According to reports, these efforts were halted after the deployment of Russian and Syrian troops in the areas north and northwest of Manbij.
