Türkiye resumes military patrols with Russia

On Thursday, four vehicles and 24 military personnel took part in the first patrol after a break of almost a year, the Turkish ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The ministry stated that the purpose of joint patrols is, among other things, to ensure border security. Turkey and inhabitants of the region, stabilizing the situation in the northern Syria and identifying checkpoints, headquarters and military structures belonging to the Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units (YPG), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

The patrol was carried out in the eastern part of the zone covered by the operation codenamed Spring of Peace.

In October 2019, Turkey and its allied Syrian fighters launched the Spring of Peace military offensive in northeastern Syria, with the stated goal of driving the Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units out of the border strip in the middle of the Turkish-Syrian border and creating a 30-kilometer-wide “safe zone.”

In November last year, patrols consisting of officers of the Turkish Border Guard Service and Russian military police began patrolling the Syrian border under the agreement concluded in Sochi by Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.

The Western-backed YPG is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which played a decisive role in defeating the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Ankara considers it a terrorist organization because of its links to the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is outlawed in Turkey.

From November 2019 to October 2023 Russia and Türkiye conducted 344 joint ground patrols in northern Syria, the Turkish Defense Ministry said.

The patrols were resumed amid reports that Ankara wants to improve relations with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. In July this year, Erdogan announced that Turkey and Syria would outline a plan to restore frozen bilateral ties and take appropriate steps to do so. Assad, meanwhile, said he would only meet with Erdogan if both countries focused on “key issues,” namely Turkish support for “terrorism” and the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory.

In October 2019, Russian military expert Viktor Murakhovsky told the BBC that, according to his calculations, at least three battalions of soldiers would be needed to patrol the Syrian border, including support.

– Taking into account sections (of the border – ed.) 20-25 kilometers long and 10 kilometers deep, this requires about three battalions, i.e. about 1.5 thousand soldiers – Murachowski said then.