International Syria Discussions, v2: Turkey and Syria Trade Deadly Strikes, As Russia Watches Uneasily.

[Arkain2K]

Battle for Syrian Town Pits Turkey Against Assad Regime
Turkish forces are advancing on Tal Tamar in an apparent bid to expand the area under their control without Russian joint supervision
By David Gauthier-Villars in Istanbul and Raja Abdulrahim in Beirut | Nov. 4, 2019

Turkey’s weekslong efforts to seize Kurdish-held territories in Syria have put the Turkish military on a collision course with the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite a recent agreement between Moscow and Ankara to prevent hostilities.

The Turks and the Assad regime are battling to control the Syrian town of Tal Tamar and surrounding villages, located at a strategic highway intersection.

Fighting intensified over the weekend, with Turkish troops reaching the eastern side of Tal Tamar, the Assad regime sending reinforcements to shore up Kurdish positions, and U.S. officials saying a U.S. convoy witnessed artillery strikes landing close to its position.

The battle for Tal Tamar is emblematic of a volatile race under way in northeastern Syria as rival forces seek to fill the void created by President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from areas Turkey covets.

After launching its cross-border offensive on Oct. 9, Turkey reached successive agreements with the U.S. and Russia to suspend military operations. In exchange for the truces, Washington and Moscow vowed to help pull back Kurdish fighters—who had helped reclaim the region from Islamic State but whom Ankara views as a terrorist threat—at least 20 miles from the Turkish border.

The pacts had similar terms but one significant difference. The agreement struck with the U.S., and which covers a 70-mile stretch between the towns of Tal Abiad and Ras al-Ain, essentially gives Turkey a free hand to administer the territory. The one struck with Russia, which covers the remaining portions of Turkey’s proposed buffer zone totaling 300 miles, is more restrictive. It calls for joint supervision and limits how deeply Turkish troops can foray inside Syria.

The Kurds, meanwhile, struck a deal for protection with the Assad regime after the U.S. pullout.

Maps released by Turkey following the Oct. 22 pact with Russia suggested Turkish troops wouldn’t seize Tal Tamar. But Turkey’s weekend advance toward the town suggests Ankara is trying to extend the contours of the area where it has sole control, said Ismail Hakki Pekin, a retired Turkish general.

“It’s a big problem,” he said. “Turkey would like to control the town, the Assad regime would like to control the town, and the Americans say, ‘This is your hell.’ ”

Ibrahim Kalin, the Turkish presidential spokesman, on Monday said Tal Tamar was outside the Turkish area of military operations in Syria, but accused the Kurdish militia of using the town to fire at Turkish troops.

“It’s a smear campaign,” Mr. Kalin said. “The aim of these attacks is to provoke a counterattack.”

A map released by the Russian Defense Ministry depicting battle lines as of Sunday morning showed Turkish troops had moved several miles east from their initial position and stood at Tal Tamar’s doorstep.

U.S. officials declined to attribute the strikes that landed close to the U.S. convoy traveling on the strategic M4 highway running parallel to the border with Turkey. But the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday said they had come from areas controlled by Turkish-backed fighters.

An aid group, the Free Burma Rangers, said one of its workers was killed and another wounded by a Turkish drone strike near Tal Tamar on Sunday. The Turkish Defense Ministry rejected reports it had fired at civilians.

Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Syria in early 2012, siding with anti-Assad rebels. But Turkish officials say Ankara’s deepening military cooperation with Russia, the Syrian president’s main backer, will force the Turkish government to renew direct contact with Damascus.

Russian authorities stopped short of condemning the Turkish move on Tal Tamar, but Mr. Pekin said he expected Moscow to take Mr. Assad’s side. “I think they will ask Turkey to step back,” he said.

The Turkish-backed fighters sought to capture areas south of the M4 highway Monday morning, leading to clashes between them and the Kurdish militia around a number of villages near Tal Tamar, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The militia pushed back the attempted advance of the Turkish-backed groups, the war monitor said.

The Kurdish militia also reported that clashes continued with Turkish-backed forces on Monday in villages around Tal Tamar, saying it had killed 57 of the Turkish-backed fighters.

The Assad regime, which has vowed to confront what it calls Turkish aggression, continued to send reinforcements to areas east of Ras al-Ain and around Tal Tamar, state media reported.

The Syrian regime has used Turkey’s expansion into northern Syria as an opportunity to deploy into towns and villages that had been under sole control of the Kurdish militia for years.

As they have entered these new areas, the Syrian military units have raised the national Syrian flag, as they have done in areas reclaimed from rebels, to make clear the return of the Assad regime to the northeast.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-for-syrian-town-pits-turkey-against-assad-regime-11572895584

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Mendacious]

What the hell is Russia’s plan here? People want to say what we were doing was unsustainable. I guess they’re just going to use all leverage against Assad since they basically ensured his survival

 

[Arkain2K]

What the hell is Russia’s plan here? People want to say what we were doing was unsustainable. I guess they’re just going to use all leverage against Assad since they basically ensured his survival

Russia is asserting their sphere of influence in parts of the Middle East where the U.S have little appetite for long-term political entanglement.

 

[Mendacious]

Russia is asserting their sphere of influence in parts of the Middle East where the U.S have little appetite for long-term political entanglement.

Oh that much is clear, it just seems like they’re playing every side

 

[Arkain2K]

Very interesting. The same people who wanted to see thousands more American troops deployed to Syria to guard Kurdish town in perpetuity (which means fighting against Turkish and Syrian troops if needs be) is now questioning the legality of the few hundreds U.S troops safeguarding the oil rigs under Kurdish control (which means fighting against Turkish and Syrian troops if needs be).

Here's an idea: how about Congress pass an actual resolution to give a clear mandate and rules of engagement for the U.S troops currently stationed in Syria (or better yet, what they want to do about Rojava independence), instead of constantly flip-flopping about whether they wanted more or less than what's mandated in the 17-years-old AUMF?

Trump OKs wider Syria oil mission, raising legal questions
By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Nov 6, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has approved an expanded military mission to secure an expanse of oil fields across eastern Syria, raising a number of difficult legal questions about whether U.S. troops can launch strikes against Syrian, Russian or other forces if they threaten the oil, U.S. officials said.

The decision, coming after a meeting Friday between Trump and his defense leaders, locks hundreds of U.S. troops into a more complicated presence in Syria, despite the president’s vow to get America out of the war. Under the new plan, troops would protect a large swath of land controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters that stretches nearly 90 miles (150 kilometers) from Deir el-Zour to al-Hassakeh, but its exact size is still being determined.

Officials said many details still have to be worked out. But, Trump’s decision hands commanders a victory in their push to remain in the country to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group, counter Iran and partner with the Kurds, who battled IS alongside the U.S. for several years. But it also forces lawyers in the Pentagon to craft orders for the troops that could see them firing on Syrian government or Russian fighters trying to take back oil facilities that sit within the sovereign nation of Syria.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

Trump’s order also slams the door on any suggestion that the bulk of the more than 1,200 U.S. troops that have been in Syria will be coming home any time soon, as he has repeatedly promised.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, called the mission misguided.

“Risking the lives of our troops to guard oil rigs in eastern Syria is not only reckless, it’s not legally authorized,” Kaine told The Associated Press. “President Trump betrayed our Kurdish allies that have fought alongside American soldiers in the fight to secure a future without ISIS - and instead moved our troops to protect oil rigs.”

The Pentagon will not say how many forces will remain in Syria for the new mission. Other officials, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, suggest the total number could be at least 800 troops, including the roughly 200 who are at the al-Tanf garrison in southern Syria.

According to officials, lawyers are trying to hammer out details of the military order, which would make clear how far troops will be able to go to keep the oil in the Kurds’ control.

The legal authority for U.S. troops going into Syria to fight Islamic State militants was based on the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force that said U.S. troops can use all necessary force against those involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on America and to prevent any future acts of international terrorism. So, legal experts say the U.S. may have grounds to use the AUMF to prevent the oil from falling into IS hands.

But protecting the oil from Syria government forces or other entities may be harder to defend.

“The U.S. is not at war with either Syria or Turkey, making the use of the AUMF a stretch,” said Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

He added that while the U.S. Constitution bestows significant war powers on the president, those are generally meant to be about self-defense and for the collective defense of the country. Arguing that securing the oil is necessary for national security “just strikes me as a bridge too far,” he said.

Members of Congress, including Kaine, have also raised objections to the Trump administration using the AUMF as a basis for war against a sovereign government. That type of action, he and others have argued, required approval by Congress.

U.S. officials said the order approved by Trump does not include any mandate for the U.S. to take Syria’s oil. Trump has said multiple times that the U.S. is “keeping the oil.” But the White House and the Pentagon have so far been unable to explain what he means by that. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday he “interprets” Trump’s remarks to mean the military should deny IS access to the oil fields.

There were already a couple hundred U.S. troops around Deir el-Zour, and additional forces with armored vehicles, including Bradley infantry carriers, have begun moving in. Officials have said the total force there could grow to about 500.

Trump, Esper and other defense leaders have said it’s important to protect the oil so that Islamic State militants can’t regain control of the area and use the revenues to finance their operations.

Currently, the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces have controlled the oil, supported by a small contingent of U.S. troops. A quiet arrangement has existed between the Kurds and the Syrian government, whereby Damascus buys the surplus through middlemen in a smuggling operation that has continued despite political differences. The Kurdish-led administration sells crude oil to private refiners, who use primitive homemade refineries to process fuel and diesel and sell it back to the administration.

It’s unclear how long that agreement may continue. And if some dispute arises, U.S. troops must have clear guidance on how to respond.

U.S. forces can use military force to protect themselves. But the oil fields are expansive, and troops can’t be everywhere. If, for example, Syrian government troops try to retake a portion of an oil facility and U.S. troops are not nearby, it’s unclear now how much force they could use if they aren’t acting in self-defense.

https://apnews.com/251062e322ab4bba99251fe59c90540a

 

[Arkain2K]

Congress has failed the Kurds in Syria​

The United States would not face such a difficult dilemma in northern Syria if Congress had asserted its constitutional duty.

The Constitution delegates Congress with the power to declare war. Congress has passed a law granting the president war powers, allowing him to respond quickly to emergencies, but this comes with requirements that Congress approve the action within 60 days. But presidents rarely seek such approval, and Congress generally does not cut the purse strings for military involvement.

And so undeclared wars, waged by presidents, have abounded since the end of WWII.

If things worked as intended, U.S. forces would be in northern Syria as part of a congressional mandate, a declared war against ISIS forces, and to serve as a buffer between Kurdish allies and their Turkish nemesis, also a U.S. ally.

With such a mandate in place, U.S. foreign policy would be less at the mercy of the whims of presidents who come and go. Military actions would be subject to the collective wisdom of the people’s representatives, which means they would come much closer to representing the will of the people.

President Trump is right when he says alliances and factions in the Middle East are complicated. For instance, the United States has declared the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, to be a terrorist organization. It has had several clashes with Turkish forces.

And yet the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, is another Kurdish force that has helped the U.S. fight ISIS, and it set up a government in Kurdish controlled areas that grants rights to minorities and women. Turkey also considers it to be a terrorist group, while the United States considers it to be friendly.

Turkey, meanwhile, is a U.S. ally and a member of NATO, although its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is considered by many to have dictatorial ambitions.

These complications are only a part of the greater complications in the region that have Russia, Syria and Europe expressing alarm over Turkey’s offensive actions on Wednesday, all for different reasons.

One could argue that presidents should be free to nimbly navigate these choppy waters, and that is true as far as diplomatic actions go. But American resolve, and its relationship with trusted allies, deserve the steadiness and certainty that comes from the actions of a deliberative body.

Instead, the White House has been offering reactions this week that seem contradictory — pulling U.S. forces from the region to allow Erdoğan unimpeded access to Kurish territory, then threatening Turkey with sanctions if it did act, and finally issuing a tepid condemnation when the offensive had begun.

The Kurds have helped the United States subdue ISIS, which a few years ago threatened the stability of the region and, through terrorist networks, the world. Thousands of ISIS fighters remain imprisoned in Kurdish territory.

Allowing ISIS to reconstitute itself would be a grave setback. Reestablishing a relationship with the Kurds to help defeat ISIS again would be difficult after the actions of this week.

If the United States had followed the Constitution, the nation’s involvement in Syria, or lack thereof, would have a greater sense of certainty and consistency, which is far preferable to the current sense of crisis and confusion.

https://www.deseret.com/platform/am...congress-has-failed-the-kurds-in-syria-turkey

 

[Arkain2K]

Russia confirmed it's setting up a new base in the Syrian city of Qamishli. Yet, for all the security forces now jostling for control, they've been unable to ensure security for the local population. Charlie D'Agata reports from northeast Syria.

 

[Arkain2K]

Turkey threatens to veto Nato plans unless the Syria Kurd militia is labelled ‘a threat’
By Borzou Daragahi | Dec 3, 2019

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday threatened to scuttle Nato plans to bolster security along its eastern flank unless the military alliance endorses its description of a Syrian Kurdish armed group as a “threat”.

Speaking to reporters before heading to London for a summit of Nato leaders, Mr Erdogan warned his country would continue to veto plans to help Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to defend against Russian encroachments unless the alliance would endorse its stance that the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is a terrorist threat.

“It is inescapable for Nato to renew itself according to current threats,” Mr Erdogan said, according to the official Anadolu news agency.

The matter nearly upended a summit of Nato defence ministers in late October, with US defence secretary Mark Esper and German and French officials butting heads against Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar, who refused to budge on the matter, citing tweets by US President Donald Trump that likened the Kurdish militants to Isis.

Mr Erdogan suggested no breakthrough had come about over the issue.

“If this comes up then our stance will be the same,” he said. “Nothing will be changed.”

Nato’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that it was “well known” that the alliance had a an issue on how to designate the YPG, adding that he was working to resolve the dispute with Turkey.

“It is not like Nato doesn’t have a plan to defend the Baltic countries,” he told reporters.

Turkey launched an operation against the Kurdish-led militia in the group's northeast Syria self-rule area on 9 October, ending it after deals brokered by Russia and the US in the ensuing weeks. The offensive, which prompted sanctions on Turkey by US and European countries, strained relations between Ankara and the rest of Nato.

US and European officials have refused to designate the YPG as a threat. The group served as an ally during the years-long battle against Isis. But Ankara sees the YPG as a major threat to its territorial integrity. It has fought the group’s Turkish cousin, the PKK for decades.

Nato officials are still recovering from the trauma of the last meeting of defence ministers in October.

During that gathering, European officials were furious with Turkey, which insisted on holding up support for plans to defend the bloc’s flank from Russia until officials came up with a stronger stance against the YPG

Mr Esper was “livid” as he tried to cajole the Turks into endorsing the bolstering of Nato’s eastern flank and to scale back its operations in Syria only to be told by his Turkish counterpart Mr Akar that the word of the White House was more powerful than that of the Pentagon.

“It was surreal,” a Western diplomat, who asked to remain unnamed, told The Independent.

“The Turks are literally in a position of strength only because the Americans’ weakness is Trump, and the Turks have constantly been working on Trump. The Turkish defence minister kept smiling and saying Trump is our biggest supporter and our biggest asset. The Turkish defence minister quoted Trump’s tweets saying PKK is worse than Isis.”

Meanwhile officials from the Baltic states and Poland are worried that the imbroglio over the YPG would hold up their defence plans, urging Germany and France to sign on to the Turkish language.

“The eastern allies are prepared to agree to anything because Isis and the PKK is not their problem,” said the official.

The official said the UK was “completely lost”, absorbed in the Brexit shambles, which has caused an incoherent foreign policy.

“Their whole diplomatic capacity is sterilised, even while they have special forces on the ground in Syria,” said the official. “They do nothing. They’re silent.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-syria-kurdish-war-military-ypg-a9230651.html

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Arkain2K]

Have fun with that, Moscow!

Turkey, Syria Trade Deadly Strikes As Russia Watches Uneasily
February 3, 2020​

​

Turkey and Syria traded attacks near their shared border in a spasm of direct, deadly violence that threatens to escalate the friction between two increasingly bitter neighbors — and more deeply entangle Syria's ally Russia.

On Monday, officials in Ankara announced that at least six Turkish soldiers were killed in an artillery attack launched by the Syrian regime in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib. Within hours, Turkey answered with an assault of its own, killing several dozen Syrians in a retaliatory strike on some 40 regime positions in the area, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring agency based in the U.K., placed the death toll at 13 Syrian soldiers.

"We are determined to continue our operations to ensure the safety of our country, our nation and our brothers in Idlib," Erdogan told reporters Monday, in comments reported by Turkey's state-owned Anadolu Agency.

"Those who test Turkey's determination with such vile attacks," he added, "will understand that they made a big mistake."


His remarks are a warning not just for the Syrian regime, but also for the Kremlin.

Russian warplanes have been supporting a recent Syrian military offensive in the border region, where opposition forces cling to a few final handholds after years of bloody civil war. Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has backed Assad's push to quash those remaining forces in Idlib — much to the consternation of Turkey, which has troops stationed there as part of a 2018 de-escalation agreement with Russia meant to prevent accidental confrontations.

"Our brave soldiers are conducting security and humanitarian missions inside Syria in line with our agreements with Russia," Fahrettin Altun, Turkey's communications director, tweeted in a thread posted Monday. "If Russia is unable to control the Assad regime from targeting us, we will not hesitate to take actions against any threat, just as we did today in Idlib."



Russian officials rejected Ankara's assertions. Russia's Ministry of Defense — in a statement cited by the state-run TASS news agency — said the shelling that killed Turkish troops was in fact targeted at "terrorists" and that the collateral damage happened because Turkey failed to notify Russia about its movements.

Regardless of the cause, the fact of the killings has exacerbated an already tense situation in northwest Syria — particularly in Idlib, the last rebel-held province and home to more than 3 million civilians. Negotiations between Russian and Turkish diplomats, who back opposing sides of the Syrian war, have done little to mitigate the violence and its effects on residents.

The United Nations says that at least 1,300 of those civilians were killed during a four-month span last year and that, all told, more than 700,000 of them have been displaced by the fighting in the past nine months alone.



"Civilians in other areas are not waiting around to see what happens. They're packing up. They're heading close to the Turkish border. Some of them are going to Idlib city, which is the capital city," NPR's Deborah Amos explained last month. "But the Turkish border's as far as they can get because that border's closed."

The latest attempt at a cease-fire took effect Jan. 12, though the truce in Idlib — like several others before it — has largely failed to calm a recent surge in fighting between the Syrian regime and rebel forces in the province.

 

[Arkain2K]

Syria war: Turkey will not let Syrian army advance in Idlib, says Erdogan
04 February 2020

Turkey will not let Syria's government gain more ground in the opposition stronghold of Idlib province, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.

Mr Erdogan told reporters that Russian-backed pro-government forces were "driving innocent and grieving people in Idlib towards our borders".

More than half a million civilians have fled their homes since the government launched an offensive in December.

Mr Erdogan's warning came after eight Turkish military personnel were killed.

Turkey's defence ministry said seven soldiers and one civilian died in Idlib on Monday when they were shelled by the Syrian army despite being told of their position. In response, Turkish forces "neutralised" 76 Syrian soldiers, it added.

Syrian state media said there were no casualties. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that at least 13 soldiers were killed by Turkish fire in Idlib and neighbouring Latakia and Hama provinces.

The Turkish military has deployed troops to Idlib to monitor a 2017 de-escalation agreement brokered by Turkey and Russia that has been repeatedly violated.

It was hoped the agreement would avert a government assault that the UN said threatened to create the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st Century.

"Syria is right now trying to buy time by driving those innocent and grieving people in Idlib toward our borders," Mr Erdogan was quoted as saying by Turkish media. "We will not allow Syria the opportunity to gain ground there."

The president also said Turkey and Russia - who back opposing sides in Syria's nine-year civil war - should seek to resolve their differences.

"There is no need for us to be engaged in a conflict or a serious contradiction with Russia at this stage."

"We will of course sit down and discuss everything. Not with anger, though. Because those who sit down with anger, get up with losses," he added.

On Friday, Mr Erdogan threatened to use military force if the situation in Idlib was "not returned to normal quickly".

Turkey is already hosting 3.6m Syrian refugees and says it would not be able to handle a fresh influx of displaced people.

A Turkish security official told Reuters news agency that there were intermittent clashes between Turkish and Syrian troops on Tuesday around the major town of Saraqeb, which straddles the intersection of the M4 and M5 highways.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said pro-government forces were advancing in the eastern Saraqeb countryside, capturing several villages. Government and Russian warplanes were also carrying out intense air strikes in the surrounding area, it added.

The government and Russia have insisted that they are targeting jihadist militants, but activists have said civilians and civilian infrastructure are being attacked.

The UN human rights office has verified the deaths of at least 83 civilians between 20 and 30 January alone , while more than 1,500 deaths have been recorded in the past nine months.

UN humanitarian officials warned on Tuesday that 520,000 of the 3m people living in Idlib, the vast majority of them women and children, had fled their homes since 1 December.

An additional 280,000 people living in urban centres on the M4/M5 highway axis were at imminent risk of displacement if military operations continued, they said.

"Many of the displaced have left with nothing but the clothes on their back or what they could pile onto ramshackle vehicles," Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva.

"They urgently need shelter, food, water and sanitation support, health support, emergency education and not least protection."

It has compounded an already dire humanitarian situation on the ground caused by the displacement of more than 400,000 other people between April and August.

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-51371462

 

[Arkain2K]

Turkey and Syria are fighting in a shoe box in northern Syria, and officials fear it could ignite a bigger conflict with Russia
Mitch Prothero | Feb 4, 2020

US and Russian troops operating in northwestern Syria are caught between increasingly hostile Turkish and Syrian government forces that have exchanged small arms fire and air strikes in the past 36 hours.

The exchanges of fire have led to dozens of casualties in an escalation in a very tight area of operations already filled with a slew of combatants, a NATO official in the area told Business Insider.

A NATO official told Business Insider that US troops had been ordered to block the movement of Russian troops through the checkpoints it controls to prevent further confusion of each military's location inside the area.

The Turkish invasion turned a relatively peaceful Syrian Kurdish controlled enclave that had been freed from ISIS occupation into a confusing matrix of rival militaries and militias.

It is now patrolled or controlled by combinations of US, Russian, Kurdish, Syrian regime, Iranian regime and Turkish government troops, as well as a gaggle of variously aligned Syrian militias, mostly deployed along the M4 highway that runs parallel to the Turkish Syrian border.

Sunday and Monday's direct clashes between Turkey and Syria came after Syrian forces tried to take part of the M4 highway from a Turkish trained and equipped militia.

Syrian regime troops backed by Russian and Iranian special forces have been pushing into the last rebel held enclave in Idlib Province to the west of the corridor, known in Kurdish as Rojava, for months.

After Syrian shelling killed at least five Turkish soldiers, Ankara unleashed a round of airstrikes early Monday morning that they claimed killed 75 Assad loyalist troops.

While these casualty numbers cannot be confirmed amid Syria's opaque conflict, the clashes represent the worst confrontation between Turkey and Syria since the start of the Syrian revolution nine years ago.

"The Turks were on the de-escalation [telephone] line yesterday with the Russians trying to make sure the fight didn't expand to include their guys," said a military official from a NATO country who was briefed on the incident.

The official, who asked not to be named, said that with Russian advisors deeply embedded in the Syrian regime forces, the Turks were keen to avoid expanding the conflict to include the Russian military.

Russia also maintains independent "peacekeeping patrols" in Rojava in areas of operation shared with US forces.

"Nothing about the Russian mission includes 'get dragged into a shooting war with the Turks,' so they were quick to move their guys out of the way," the official said.

"But the tight spaces linked by a handful of roads means the entire area is filled with armed guys bumping into each other."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was keen to keep Russia out of the skirmishes also, saying: "I want to especially tell the Russian authorities that our interlocutor here is not you but the Syrian regime, and do not stand in our way,"

He made the comments to reporters before flying to Ukraine Monday, according to Turkish state media organisation TRT.

Social media reports from the M4 area showed US troops refusing to allow a Russian military police patrol to pass through their checkpoint, in what the NATO official described as a "tactical lockdown" of the areas around US forces.

"On any normal day it feels like everyone in the [area of operations] could start shooting at each other but once the Turks and Syrians started firing directly on each other's positions, it became clear that allowing potentially hostile forces freedom of movement could further complicate things," they said.

"So for now, there's gonna be a lockdown for force protection reasons."

https://www.businessinsider.com/turkey-syria-conflict-us-troops-caught-in-middle-of-fight-2020-2