Next Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is going to take an oath in parliament and announce the new cabinet. A minister guessing game is being played in Ankara lately, with people saying, “It will surely be like this, this person will be assigned to this position.” Eventually, on Monday evening, this exciting wait too is going to end and the new government is going to swiftly focus on the problems of the country that await to be solved.
Once the tensions of the agenda concerning the elections and internal politics start dying down, Manbij will likely be one of the headlining topics.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had returned from his Washington visit on June 4 with a Manbij deal. The U.S. had accepted Turkey’s demands, with the People’s Project Units’ (YPG) removal from Manbij scheduled. A tri-phase timetable which consists of the preparation process, the formation of mechanisms for application, and the application itself.
The “application part” of the calendar, which is the main phase, was predicted to start as of July 4, in other words, yesterday.
So, are things going as planned on the ground?
Is the YPG withdrawing?
Is the U.S. sticking to its end of the deal it made with Turkey? Or are we face to face with a new distraction tactic?
After focusing on these questions, we turned to our sources and got the “current status” report.
US is keeping up its end of the deal, negotiations are ongoing
According to security sources, there is no will problem in terms of the deal working. The U.S. continues to keep its promise to Turkey. Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Philip Kosnet’s statement, “I believe the YPG understands the situation,” is revisited in this context. It seems this statement was interpreted as, “We reached an agreement with Turkey, we have no other choice but to leave Manbij.”
Although there appears to be no problem in terms of sticking to the agreement, there may be a delay caused by the theoretical/practical dispute about applying the timetable to a tee.
In brief, negotiations with the U.S. for the future of Manbij are ongoing. There are two main topics:
1-How the city’s political government mechanism will be formed.
2-The kind of structure the public order and law enforcement forces will be formed after the YPG withdraws.
One example:
Both sides are open to a predominately Arab formation, which made up the majority in the city before the war. However, they are discussing from which tribes, which groups these structures will be established.
We also know that there have been certain developments regarding the application stage of the deal to date. The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) conducted its 9th patrol operation yesterday between the Euphrates Shield and Manbij.
In addition to this, it needs to be emphasized that Turkey’s real demand is the complete removal of the YPG from the west of the Euphrates and the city to be governed by local actors in cooperation with the U.S./Turkey.
Is the YPG withdrawing?
It is not possible to say that they have drawn back enough, but as long as the U.S. continues to stick to the deal with Turkey, it does not seem possible for them to resist this either.
One other question is: Where are those who have withdrawn going?
The response from the relevant people is that they are crossing over to the east of the Euphrates via Manbij and going first to YPG-controlled Hasakah, and from there, some go to Iraq’s Qandil.
While we were focusing on the elections here, there were other developments in the region. For example, we recently received news that an agreement was made between the Syrian PKK and the Assad regime.
There is an upcoming appointment between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, of which Syria will also be among their topics of discussion.
We are talking about a region in which multiple-actor alliance relations frequently change places. Keeping a close watch on things will be beneficial.
