Turkish Defense Minister announces the start of joint Turkish-US patrols in the area to be a “safe area” northeast of Syria

This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his threat to launch an operation against the YPG in Syria in the absence of progress on the safe area. Turkey has also consistently warned of any delays in this project.

But no details about the time frame and size of the region have been released, although Erdogan has signaled that his US counterpart, Donald Trump, has promised it will be 32 kilometers wide.

A joint operations center was established as part of the agreement.

Turkey launched two cross-border attacks in Syria against the YPG and IS in 2016 and 2018.

For his part, the US Chief of Staff, Joseph Danford, pointed out that “The United States needs to train between 50,000 and 60,000 local forces to control security in northern Syria, in Iraq and Syria borders as well”.

He expressed concern over the organization’s tactics of guerrilla warfare, the refugee crisis, and ISIS detainees held by the Kurdish PKK / YPK organizations, calling for supporting SDF, which is the interface used by the Kurdish “YPK / PKK”, in order to combat the remnants of ISIS.

He stressed the importance of establishing security in areas cleared of ISIS operatives, pointing out that “we’ve a lot to do and we estimate that 50,000 to 60,000 local forces should be trained to control security in this area and perhaps we have trained half of this number so far”.