The fighting has not stopped yet. On October 18th shelling could still be heard near the Turkish border
MERELY A WEEK into its offensive against American-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, victory for Turkey came not on the battlefield, but at the negotiating table, courtesy of diplomats from Washington. On October 17th an American delegation led by Mike Pence, the vice-president, walked out of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s palace in Ankara with a ceasefire agreement that read like a list of concessions to Turkey.
The process has been a model of President Donald Trump’s chaotic foreign policy. In the space of two weeks, Mr Trump gave Turkey’s offensive the green light by pulling American forces away from the border, sent Mr Erdogan a zany letter , threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy and imposed largely meaningless sanctions. He capped it off by arguing that the Kurdish fighters his own government had been backing for years to destroy the IS “caliphate” were “more of a terrorist threat” than IS.
The official aim of Turkey’s invasion was to remove the YPG, which Mr Erdogan’s government considers a terrorist group, from the border areas. The unstated one was to thwart the prospect of Kurdish autonomy inside Syria, which would embolden Turkey’s own Kurdish nationalists . Turkey seems to have succeeded on both counts. This has come at a cost, however. Turkey’s international reputation is damaged.
The course of Turkey’s operation now seems to hinge on Mr Erdogan’s upcoming meeting with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The two strongmen will meet in Sochi on October 22nd, which just happens to be the day when the 120-hour ceasefire expires.
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