Erdogan may outwardly refuse a ceasefire. But he knows he is in too deep

Analysis: Turkish invasion of northern Syria has basically stalled and most of Erdogan’s original goals have become unattainable

Turkey has agreed to a ceasefire in its invasion of northern Syria under pressure from the US and in return for a withdrawal of Kurdish forces from a ‘safe zone’ along the border. It is unclear if the zone from which the Kurdish People’s Mobilisation Units (YPG) have agreed to pull back is a short piece of the territory, where there has been heavy fighting.or the entire heavily populated 300-mile-long frontier.

The truce was announced by US Vice President Mike Pence after five hours of talks in Ankara with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, if taken at face value, would give Turkey everything Turkey has demanded in Syria in recent years. It appears unlikely that the YPG would agree to any such thing, particularly after the introduction of Syrian troops backed by Russia into Kurdish controlled cities and towns. But, if this turns out to be the US intention it would amount to a second gross betrayal of the Kurds by its former US allies.

President Erdogan has previously said that “no power” would force him to agree a ceasefire until he had achieved his goal of forcing Kurdish paramilitaries to withdraw from “a safe zone” stretching for 300 miles along the Turkish-Syrian border.

At the time of the unexpected announcement by Mr Pence, the Turkish invasion of northern Syria that began on 9 October appeared to have stalled and the original Turkish goals were becoming unattainable. It is too early to say if the US-Turkish agreement is rooted in any sort of reality or is one more bizarre twist in President Trump’s Syrian policy.

Turkish troops and the Arab militiamen under their control are still battling for a 62-mile-long stretch of the border between the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad. The proposed Turkish safe zone was supposed to include a vast swathe of territory from the Euphrates river to the Iraqi border but so far Turkish-controlled territory is small and very unsafe. Mr Erdogan’s has proposed to settle two million Syrian refuges in the zone, something which hitherto has appeared to be a dangerous fantasy.

A crucial Turkish aim was to eliminate the 25,000-strong People’s Mobilisation Units (YPG) and break their alliance with the US. But the YPG – the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces that includes many Arab fighters - is now fighting side-by-side with President Bashar al-Assad’s army, backed by the Russians.

It may not turn out to be a great exchange from the point of view of Turkey, which was clearly unprepared for the speed with which Mr Assad’s forces and the Russians raced into the main Kurdish-controlled cities of northern Syria: Manbij, Kobani, Raqqa, Hasakah, Qamishli and Derik.

In some cases, YPG fighters simply changed into Syrian army uniforms and ran up the Syrian national flag, according to reports.

This could only have been done so efficiently if Assad, the Russians and Kurds had already reached an agreement and made detailed plans about what to do in the event of an American withdrawal and a Turkish invasion.

A curious feature of the latest phase in the Syrian crisis is that the US, which precipitated it with President Trump’s tweet about a US troop pull-out, was the country least prepared for what happened next. It has been reduced to bombing its former headquarters in a giant cement near Manbij to destroy equipment its forces left behind.

Turkey, which has been threatening to invade Kurdish-controlled Syria east of the Euphrates for years, failed to assemble a large enough military force and did not think through the consequences of its attack.

It may be that it was the Kurds, who claim to have been deeply shocked and surprised by the US betrayal, who had foreseen their abandonment and pre-planned an effective counter-stroke by instantly switching sides.

Turkey did not deploy sufficient troops to launch more than a limited cross border incursion: it reportedly had only 6,000 Turkish soldiers and 2,000 Arab militia on the central front opposite Ras al-Ayn and Tal-Abyad, and another 4,000 militia near the strategically vital and populous city of Manbij.

This was nowhere near enough for Turkey to advance very far and, around Manbij, a Sunni Arab city with a population upwards of 300,000, this advance had scarcely begun before it was pre-empted by the arrival of Syrian army and Russian forces, which Mr Erdogan was never in a position to oppose.

The Turkish offensive was led by the Syrian National Army, a group of Sunni Arab – and some Turkoman – militias under Turkish control. These had earlier gained an unsavoury reputation in the formerly Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwest Syria, which Turkey seized last year, for violence against civilians, criminality and ethnic cleansing.

Many militiamen have been identified as former Isis or al-Qaeda fighters. By putting these ill-disciplined jihadis in its front line, Turkey guaranteed that its move into Syria would produce well publicised atrocities, such as the murder of Hevrin Khalaf, a well-known Kurdish woman politician, dragged from her car and executed by pro-Turkish militiamen.

The Syrian Kurds may be militarily outmatched by the Turkish armed forces, and, most particularly, by its airpower, artillery and tanks, but the Kurds have a much better information and propaganda organisation than Ankara. They knew what buttons to press when it came to attracting international public and media sympathy, such as emphasising the escape of Isis prisoners as a result of the Turkish attack. The pictures of columns of 160,000, mainly Kurdish, Syrian refugees fleeing the border zone told their own story.

The one area in which Mr Erdogan’s invasion of Syria has worked well is back home in Turkey, where a controlled and compliant media is portraying it as a string of heroic victories over terrorism. It may be some time, if ever, before the paucity of positive results for Turkey becomes clear.