AKCAKALE, Turkey (Dispatches) — Syrian government troops moved into towns and villages in northern Syria on Monday following an important agreement with Kurdish fighters after the pullback of U.S. forces.
The Syrian military’s deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad’s government to help them fend off Turkey’s invasion, now in its sixth day.
The army’s return to the region troops abandoned in 2012 at the height of the Syria war is a turning point in the eight-year conflict, giving yet another major boost to the government since the crisis began.
The new situation was set in motion last week, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to step aside, clearing the way for an attack by Turkey, which regards the Kurds as terrorists. Since 2014, the Kurds were allied with the U.S. in Syria, and Trump’s move was decried at home and abroad as a betrayal of an ally.
In the past five days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 200 kilometers (125 miles). The offensive has displaced at least 130,000 people.
Abandoned in the middle of the battlefield, the Kurds turned to President Bashar al-Assad for protection and announced Sunday night that Syrian government troops would be deployed in Kurdish-controlled towns and villages along the border with Turkey.
"We are going back to our normal positions that are at the border,” said a Syrian officer, as embattled Kurdish authorities invited the government to retake towns and villages in the north.
Syrian troops arrived Monday in the northern province of Raqqah aboard buses and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns. Troops moved into the towns of Tal Tamr, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Turkish border, Ein Issa and Tabqa, known for its dam on the Euphrates River and a nearby air base of the same name.
Residents of the northern city of Qamishli celebrated the announcement that the Syrian troops would be deployed to the area.
People were seen on motorcycles and standing on vehicles, dancing and waving Syrian flags in the streets of Qamishli, AFP news agency reported.
Crowds of people also gathered in the streets of Hasakeh to celebrate the planned deployment of government troops. They waved national flags and blared horns to celebrate the army build-up.
Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, said the Kurds felt they had no choice but to turn to Damascus in the face of the "betrayal” of Washington.
Turkey has pressed on with its invasion of northern Syria, warning its NATO allies in Europe and the United States not to stand in its way.
The European Union unanimously condemned Turkey’s military move and asked all 28 of its member states to stop selling arms to Ankara, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told The Associated Press.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian and Turkish officials have remained in close contact.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled his military was ready to launch an assault on the Kurdish-held region of Manbij, on the western flank of the Euphrates. The flashpoint area housed U.S. troops who patrolled the region since 2017 to deter a confrontation between Turkey and Kurdish fighters.
A U.S. official said Monday troops were still the town, preparing to leave.
"We are about to implement our decision on Manbij,” Erdogan told reporters, adding that Turkey aimed to return the city to Arab populations that he said were its rightful owners.
Turkish forces were already positioned at the city’s edge, according to CNN-Turk. Syrian troops already have a presence south of Manbij.
Erdogan has already said Turkey will not negotiate with the Syrian Kurdish fighters, saying they have links to a long-running Kurdish insurgency within its own borders.
Syria’s state-run news agency SANA said government forces planned to "confront the Turkish aggression.”
The Kremlin, however, said on Monday it did not want to entertain the possibility of a clash in Syria between Russian and Turkish forces and said Moscow was in regular contact with Ankara, including at a military level.
Asked if Moscow was worried that Russia could get sucked into a conflict with Turkish forces because of its backing for the Syrian army, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that was the last thing it wanted.
"We wouldn’t even like to think about that scenario,” Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said Moscow had already warned all sides in the Syrian conflict to avoid any action that could escalate tensions in the area or damage a fragile political process.
Erdogan said earlier on Monday that he did not envisage any problems would emerge in Syria’s Kobani (Ain al-Arab) after a Syrian army deployment is executed along the border.
Erdogan spoke of what he called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s "positive approach” to Turkey’s actions.