Turkey, Russia reach accord on north Syria—and Trump applauds

Following a six-hour-long meeting in the Russian resort city of Sochi on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan concluded an agreement on the future of northern Syria, which Turkish officials hailed as “historic.”

The agreement meets Ankara’s demand for a 30-kilometer buffer zone along almost the entirety of its border with Syria. It is unclear, however, as CNN noted, if that applies only to the area east of the Euphrates River, where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), America’s main partner in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, exercised control, or to the entirety of Turkey’s border with Syria.

Whatever its dimensions, Ankara intends to repopulate the border zone with large numbers of Syrian refugees now living in Turkey, and in Tuesday’s agreement, Moscow appears to have acquiesced.

Read the full story and more in Kurdistan 24.