US Says No Need For Buffer Zone In Syria

Though Turkey is pushing for the creation of a safe zone, potentially supported by a no-fly zone, inside Syria, the US has once again made clear that there is no need for the safe zone from either a US military or a coalition perspective.

Speaking at a daily press conference on Tuesday, US State Department Spokesperson John Kirby said Turkish leaders should be in a better position to talk about their plans and whether they intend to establish the safe zone in Syria.

“The US military -- and again, I'm not speaking for the Pentagon, but they've made it clear that right now they don't -- there isn't a need for it from a US military or coalition perspective, and that there are difficulties in trying to execute that kind of thing,” Kirby said.

The Turkish media has been abuzz with stories suggesting that Turkey is planning to establish the safe zone, even without the support of the partners in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led a National Security Council (MGK) meeting last week to discuss possible measures that Turkey may take in the face of emerging threats along its border with Syria.

Kirby said Turkey has made its intention to create a safe zone, which may or may not include a no-fly zone, very clear for months, though the US is not aware of any specific military plans that Turkey might have, adding: “And I would let the US military speak for the complications and the difficulties in any kind of US support for that kind of plan. But again, you should refer -- I'd refer you to Ankara.”

Kirby also said that the US State Department has made clear that it does not believe there is a need for the safe zone at this time, and that the use of coalition military assets toward the creation of such a zone would require an “awful lot in terms of logistics, time, resources and effort,” adding, “It's something that the coalition has thus far not been interested in supporting.”

In the meantime, ISIL militants have captured a district in the town of Tel Abyad in northern Syria from Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Tuesday. There were heavy clashes around the town, which serves as a border crossing, earlier on Tuesday. ISIL is back on the offensive in Syria after two weeks of reverses at the hands of the Kurdish-led forces supported by US-led air strikes.

The Kurds have self-rule in parts of northern Syria and have fought intense battles against ISIL. However, on Wednesday, Redur Khalil of the People's Protection Units (YPG) said that Kurdish fighters now fully control Tel Abyad after having captured the northeastern neighborhood of Mashhour, The Associated Press reported. Khalil said ISIL fighters were evicted from the neighborhood, adding that three extremists were killed and that a fourth had blown himself up.

As a result of the latest clashes in Tel Abyad, about 800 Syrians have entered Turkey through the Akçakale border gate on Tuesday, most of them women, children and the elderly, and have been sent to refugee camps in Şanlıurfa province.

Erdoğan's spokesperson, İbrahim Kalın, said on Tuesday that any measures taken in response to recent security threats at the Syrian border will be mainly aimed at securing the border, and that interpreting those measures as military intervention was “not very rational,” in reference to the recent reports.

On Wednesday, 97 nongovernmental organizations made a joint statement in Diyarbakır saying that a push for military intervention in Syria will drag Turkey into a quagmire, the privately owned Cihan news agency has reported.

Speaking to the press, Human Rights Association (İHD) Diyarbakır branch President Raci Bilici said that at a time when Turkey has come a long way toward solving its Kurdish problem, the current government and Erdoğan seem to have shelved the issue, after statements from Erdoğan such as, “There is no Kurdish problem,” and several police operations in the area aimed at provoking local people.

Bilici said the security measures that Turkey is considering at the moment, including a military intervention into Syria, are not acceptable, and if Turkey insists on the intervention it will drag the nation into danger.

The Milliyet daily reported on Wednesday that the Turkish military will not allow the YPG to attack in the cities of Jarablus or Idlib, where regime forces are clashing with the Syrian opposition. Such attacks would cause a huge flow of refugees toward Turkey. The military will act without waiting for an order from the government, according to a plan of action that was agreed upon by senior Turkish officials during the MGK meeting earlier this week, the report said.

Ankara is concerned by the possibility of a Kurdish-controlled corridor in the north of Syria and an eventual establishment of a Kurdish state. Erdoğan recently said that Turkey cannot allow for the existence of a Kurdish state in the north of Syria.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)