MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. /TASS/. Syria’s government army has reached the border with Turkey near the northeastern city of Ras al-Ayn, SANA news agency reported on Sunday.
According to SANA, after establishing control over dozens of villages in settlements in the border area the Syrian regular army entered the settlements of al-Kisra and Tell Ziyab near Ras al-Ayn.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition formed around Kurdish paramilitary units, said earlier in the day it agreed to implement the terms of the deal reached by the Russian and Turkish leaders in Sochi and began to withdraw its forces from the Syrian-Turkish border.
On October 9, Turkey launched a military incursion into northern Syria, codenaming it Operation Peace Spring, with the Turkish Armed Forces and the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army carrying it out. Erdogan’s military campaign kicked off with airstrikes on the positions of the previously US-backed Kurdish units. The Erdogan government claimed that its goal is to clear the border area of what it calls ‘terrorists’ (Turkey’s broad label of the Kurdish forces) and establish a 30 km-long buffer zone in Syria’s north, where over Syrian refugees in Turkey would resettle. According to various estimates, currently there are about 3.6 to 4 million refugees in Turkey.
On October 22, Russian and Turkish Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed a memorandum on joint actions in northeastern Syria. Under the arrangement, the Russian military police and Syrian military are to be moved into the areas bordering the zone of Turkey’s operation in Syria as of noon of October 23. The Kurdish forces will have 150 hours to vacate the 30-kilometer wide strip of land along the Turkish border. After that Russian and Turkish forces are to begin joint patrols. Ankara declared its operation de facto suspended. Nevertheless, Turkey holds control of vast swathes where Ankara plans to resettle the refugees.