Media: Damascus and Kurds agree to bring Syrian army into Afrin
Both the Syrian government and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have agreed that Damascus’s forces should be brought into Afrin in order to “repel the attack by Turkey”, reported the TV channel Al-Mayadeen with reference to its own sources in Syria.
The source clarified that the agreement was reached after the relevant negotiations. According to Al-Mayadeen’s sources in the republic, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has announced that the movement of Syrian forces into Afrin is “close at hand”. This was not opposed by the People’s Protection Units, because the Kurdish armed groups believe that this will “protect the region” from the Turkish military.
“The Syrian state supports the [Kurdish] military divisions in their military goals, and is deploying its fighters in Afrin,” one of the participants in the negotiations between Damascus and the YPG told Al-Mayadeen. The Kurds will be given this support “in the near future”. A well informed source confirmed this information to RIA Novosti. “An agreement has been reached to distribute Syrian forces along the Syria-Turkey border in Afrin, north of Aleppo, in the next few days,” he said.
“The people who live in Afrin are also part of Syria”, Chikhan Mohammed, deputy head of the foreign affairs department in Afrin, told Al-Mayadeen. “They are also faced with Turkish aggression,” an unnamed Kurdish deputy told the TV channel.
The Turkish military is conducting operation “Olive Branch” in the Syrian Afrin province. Ankara initiated the operation on January 20. In this operation the Turkish air force and artillery are striking the Kurdish forces’ positions in northern Syria. Ankara considers the Kurdish forces terrorists. However, the Syrian government has called Turkey’s operation an act of aggression, approaching the UN Security Council and Secretary General with a complaint in this regard.