Turkey pauses fighting, but does not withdraw

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that Turkey had agreed to suspend its military operations in northeast Syria for five days while Syrian Kurdish fighters leave the area, immediately raising questions about whether the agreement was a diplomatic breakthrough or a capitulation to the Turkish government.

Emerging from close to five hours of deliberations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Pence said that the American delegation had achieved the ceasefire it had hoped to broker in the hastily organized trip to Ankara, the Turkish capital. Hailing the agreement as a diplomatic victory for President Donald Trump, he called it a “solution we believe will save lives.”

The agreement “ends the violence — which is what President Trump sent us here to do,” Pence said at a news conference at the ambassador’s residence.

But Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, immediately countered that the agreement was not a cease-fire at all, but merely a “pause for our operation.” He added that “as a result of our president’s skillful leadership, we got what we wanted.”

He noted that the United States accepted the importance of the safe zone to protect Turkey’s legitimate security interests. “It is fully agreed that the safe zone will be under the control of the Turkish armed forces,” he said. “Giving a break does not mean to withdraw our forces,” he said. “We will go on being there.”

Cavusoglu also directly contradicted Pence’s announcement that Turkey had agreed to engage in no military action in Kobani, Syria.

“We did not make any promises about Kobani,” Cavusoglu said, adding that they would discuss Kobani with Russia going forward.

Though the announcement halts fighting for five days, and gave Pence an agreement to return home with, it was in practice less of a cease-fire deal than an acknowledgment of the United States’ rapid loss of influence in Syria since the Turkish invasion began last Wednesday.

In less than two weeks, the United States’ official position has reversed from one of tacit support for Syrian Kurdish control of northern Syria — to one of total acceptance of Turkish territorial ambitions in the same area.

“This seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors,” said Aaron Stein, author of Turkey’s New Foreign Policy, and director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “It’s all based on the fictional notion that the U.S. has a say in a place where we withdrew our soldiers.”

“The U.S. is irrelevant here, the U.S. has left,” Stein added.

The announcement also raised questions about whether the Kurds would even agree to be moved out of northern Syria. Pence told reporters that the United States was already working with Kurdish militia members, as well as Syrian defense forces to facilitate an “orderly withdrawal.” That process, he said, had “literally already begun.”

What was clear, however, was that even a pause in violence was enough of a carrot for Pence and the Trump administration to declare victory after bipartisan condemnation for one of the biggest self- created foreign policy crises of the Trump administration.

“This deal could NEVER have been made 3 days ago,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “There needed to be some ‘ tough’ love in order to get it done. Great for everybody. Proud of all!”

Trump was referring to a letter he sent to Erdogan, warning him in plain terms rarely used between heads of state, to not “be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” The American delegation arrived in Ankara earlier Thursday amid reports that Erdogan had launched the invasion in part as a reaction to the letter.

The letter was dated Oct. 9, the same day that a Turkish military operation began against Syrian Kurdish fighters who had partnered with U. S. troops against the Islamic State.

As part of the agreement, the Trump administration also agreed not to impose any further sanctions on Turkey.