{"id":669318,"date":"2019-10-24T06:16:33","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T03:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/tr\/content\/?p=669318"},"modified":"2019-10-24T06:16:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T03:16:33","slug":"weakened-us-sanctions-threat-lingers-in-wake-of-turkish-deal-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2019\/10\/24\/weakened-us-sanctions-threat-lingers-in-wake-of-turkish-deal-with-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Weakened US sanctions threat lingers in wake of Turkish deal with Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Diego Cupolo<\/span>
\nArticle Summary<\/div>\n
Possible US sanctions on Turkey are looming as fighting subsides in northeast Syria and Kurdish forces draw back following an agreement between Ankara and Moscow.<\/div>\n
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<\/i> REUTERS\/Tom Brenner<\/div>\n
US President Donald Trump delivers a statement on the conflict in Syria as Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House national security adviser Robert O\u2019Brien stand by in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, Oct. 23, 2019.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Two weeks after Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria to expel Kurdish militants from its southern border and establish a so-called safe zone,\u00a0fighting has largely ended as result of an agreement reached by Turkish President\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Meeting in Sochi, the two leaders agreed to deploy their forces across most of the northeastern Syrian border and conduct joint patrols along a corridor 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep, while Kurdish-led forces supported by the United States have withdrawn from an\u00a0area 30 kilometers (19 miles)\u00a0deep. Meanwhile, the Operation Peace Spring area between the Syrian towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain\u00a0will remain under the control of the\u00a0Turkish military and Turkish-backed Syrian forces.<\/p>\n

The Syrian regime stated Wednesday it would establish 15 observation posts in the region. Turkish officials will seek to reestablish terms set by the 1998 Adana agreement between Ankara and Damascus\u00a0in which Turkish forces would be able to carry out security operations within a 5-kilometer (3-mile) band along the Syrian border.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdana more or less gives Turkey what it wants \u2026 [which is] to break the US-SDF agreement,\u201d said Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, using the acronym for the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which Ankara considers a security threat.<\/p>\n

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Syria Conflict<\/span>Trump administration scrambles to salvage US troop presence in Syria<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cBut the political cost of doing that was to de facto recognize [President] Bashar al-Assad,\u201d Stein continued. \u201cNow Turkey has been resisting this, albeit while engaging with the regime\u2019s two principal\u00a0allies, Russia and Iran. This just brings Turkey more squarely into the camp that the regime is the arbiter of security along its border.\u201d<\/p>\n

The developments come after US President\u00a0Donald Trump removed about 1,000 US troops stationed in the region, greenlighting the Turkish operation with aims to disentangle Washington from the Syrian conflict, where American forces have coordinated operations to eradicate Islamic State militants since 2014. Prior to Erdogan\u2019s agreement with Putin, US officials had secured a five-day cease-fire in northeast Syria during an Oct. 17 visit to Ankara.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Wednesday morning, Trump said Turkish officials had informed him the cease-fire would be \u201cpermanent\u201d and that he would lift economic sanctions in response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an outcome created by us,\u201d Trump told reporters in a press conference.<\/p>\n

Yet as Russian and Syrian regime forces take control of border areas not held by Turkish forces, the imposition of previously threatened US sanctions on Turkey looms large in Washington, where officials continue to debate a response to fast-developing dynamics in northeast Syria.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 9, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a sanctions bill in an effort to stop Turkey\u2019s cross-border incursion, but support for the legislation has wavered as lawmakers recover from whiplash induced by a number of power plays in northeast Syria. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell\u00a0has since cautioned lawmakers to \u201cthink extremely carefully\u201d before sanctioning Turkey and pushing Ankara \u201cinto the arms of the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m aware there is some appetite on both sides of the aisle to quickly reach for the toolbox of sanctions,\u201d McConnell said on the Senate floor this Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m open to the Senate considering them,\u201d he said, but added that caution would be needed moving forward.<\/p>\n

Though\u00a0Trump said he would repeal sanctions imposed on Oct. 14 by executive order, Ankara can still be subjected to penalties stemming from the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for the nation\u2019s acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system earlier this year.<\/p>\n

While some Washington lawmakers support employing CAATSA sanctions against Turkey, their imposition has been stalled by Trump, who continues to negotiate with Turkish officials in effort to secure the purchase of US-made Patriot missiles to replace the S-400 system,\u00a0which has\u00a0been said to pose security risks to NATO military equipment. Still, additional Turkey sanctions bills may arise in Washington as the fallout continues due to numerous human rights abuses, including the alleged use of white phosphorus\u00a0during Operation Peace Spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there was one sanctions bill in addition to CAATSA, it could\u00a0move towards joining the EU arms embargo, but circumscribing it to weapons that could be used for offensive operations in Syria,\u201d Stein told Al-Monitor, referring to the\u00a0suspension of arms exports to Turkey by European nations in response to the Syrian incursion. \u201cIf there are no offensive operations in Syria, then there may not be the impetus for the sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the economic sphere, the Turkish lira gained on the dollar following the Erdogan-Putin meeting and rallied\u00a0further after Trump\u2019s press conference. The lira opened on Wednesday at 5.80 to the dollar\u00a0and reached 5.72 at the time of reporting. Wolf Piccoli, co-president and political risk analyst at Teneo Intelligence, said the Russia-Turkey agreement would likely have little impact on Turkey\u2019s economic outlook, but \u201cthe main risk in the short term remains possible US sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be interesting to monitor the reaction of Congress to the Ankara-Moscow agreement,\u201d Piccoli told Al-Monitor. \u201cHowever, the risk of sanctions is unlikely to change due to this deal.\u201d He added, \u201cThe main driver for the lira remains overall market sentiment, especially towards emerging markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the time being, the Kurdish-led SDF forces linked with the People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG)\u00a0have reportedly been adhering to the agreement reached in Sochi and\u00a0withdrawing from the Turkish border area in northeast Syria. Following the pullout\u00a0of US forces, Ankara will oversee its border security with the Syrian regime and Russian intermediaries.<\/p>\n

Stein said the implementation of the Adana agreement was \u201cpolitically symbolic\u201d as it means Ankara must now recognize the Syrian regime in order to put pressure, via Damascus, on YPG forces that had enjoyed US support under the SDF coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes to show that when they had to choose, the US was offering more or less the same deal, but the US was offering the same deal with accommodation to the SDF,\u201d Stein told Al-Monitor. \u201cRussia\u2019s deal offered accommodation with the regime and Turkey chose that because their priority was to break the SDF structure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Found in:<\/span> Turkish-Kurdish conflict, Syria Conflict, Sanctions<\/div>\n
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Diego Cupolo<\/span> is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Ankara, Turkey. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy and The New Statesman, among other publications<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Diego Cupolo Article Summary Possible US sanctions on Turkey are looming as fighting subsides in northeast Syria and Kurdish forces draw back following an agreement between Ankara and Moscow. REUTERS\/Tom Brenner US President Donald Trump delivers a statement on the conflict in Syria as Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4092,"featured_media":669321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[9729],"class_list":["post-669318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}