Click to see full-size image, by the Ministry of Defense of Turkey
Turkey and the U.S. will resume working on the roadmap for Syria’s Manbij in order to implement it as fast as possible, Turkish Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar told the Anadolu Agency on February 23.
Akar arrived in Washington a day earlier together with Chief of General Staff Yasar Guler to discuss Syria and other issues with their U.S. counterparts. According to the Anadolu Agency, he reminded the U.S. delegations during the meeting that there should be no authority gap during troops withdrawal from Syria.
Last year, Turkey and the U.S. agreed on the roadmap that should force the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to withdraw from Manbij and replace the local administration with one loyal to Ankara. However, Washington has never complied with the plan.
The situation around the northern city escalated in late 2018 when U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he will withdraw all his forces from Syria. Turkey began massing its proxies around Manbij and several units of the Russian Military Police and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) were deployed within the Kurdish-controlled area.
Later, Trump retracted his decision by keeping U.S. troops [200-400] in Syria. Therefore, Ankara is apparently working to hold the U.S. responsible for its commitments within the roadmap agreement.
Earlier in February, a Turkish Presidential spokesman revealed that Ankara and Moscow have come to terms that the roadmap on Manbij should be implemented in line with the accords between the US and Turkey. This means that the roadmap does once again have chances to be implemented.
