RPT: ANALYSIS - Ceasefire Confirms Turkish Strike Stripped Kurds Of Bargaining Power With Syrian Gov't.

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RPT: ANALYSIS - Ceasefire Confirms Turkish Strike Stripped Kurds of Bargaining Power With Syrian Gov't.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2019) The short-term ceasefire negotiated by Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan and US Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday confirms that rebel Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria must now look to the Syrian government for protection, analysts told Sputnik.

The United States and Turkey have agreed to a ceasefire in Syria to allow the withdrawal of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) forces from the area, Pence said, adding that the agreement will last 120 hours.

The Syrian Kurds are now seeking the protection of the Syrian government after rebelling against it over the past eight years, but they now they are forced to do so from a very weak position, University of Ottawa Professor Kamal Dib, a noted historian on Syria pointed out.

"Their first order of business should not be to bargain with the central government, but rather to admit their grave error of trying to establish a quasi-state in one corner of Syria," Dib said.

The Kurds in northeastern Syria were already Syrian citizens and they should not have taken a chance to separate themselves from the mother country when Syria was invaded since 2011 by multiple forces, Dib observed.

The Kurds also needed to ''ask the Syrian Government to shoulder its responsibilities of defending the fatherland against the Turkish invaders," he said.

In addition, they needed to take the next step of agreeing to participate fully and constructively in the constitutional negotiations underway to restore political stability to the country after more than eight years of ruinous civil war, Dib advised.

"The Syrian Kurds should not act like prima donnas, but embrace the constitutional discussions to take place in Syria as one of many other Syrian groups... The Constitutional Committee process would go on regardless of what happened in the battlefields in the northeast," he said.

Both Damascus and Ankara appeared determined to avoid any danger of a direct military clash between their own forces, Dib acknowledged.

"I do not believe that would be the case. Both Turkey and Syria have many reasons not to widen the conflict and other players in the Syrian crisis (Russia, the United States, European Union, Iran and the Arabs) would certainly jump in to make the current fire as limited as possible," he said.

The Turkish aggression in northern Syria fitted the overall strategy of the United States and Turkey, Dib cautioned.

"Here lies the true meaning of the Turkish move in Northern Syria: making a reality the illusive dream that they have pursued since 2011... Maintaining the western alliance with Turkey taking central stage is more important to the United States than pleasing the local Kurds," he said.

Center for International Policy Senior Fellow Helena Cobban pointed out that although Russia had sought to mediate between the Syrian Kurds and Damascus for quite some time, the need for such an agreement was now an urgent priority for the YPG.

"Russia has been mediating between the Kurds and the Syrian government on-and-off for several years now. Obviously, from the YPG's point of view, the need for an agreement with the government has become a lot more urgent!"

However, Cobban also advised that the new Turkish incursion was unlikely to set off any war with the Syrian government.

"I don't think it will necessarily lead to war... From the Syrian point of view, Turkey has... been occupying their province of Alexandretta (Hatay) since 1939; and more recently Turkey has been exercising a strong degree of control over Idlib and parts of Aleppo province," Cobban said.

However, the crucial issue of the scores of thousands of foreign Islamists who had flooded into Syria to fight against the central government with the rebels over the past eight years still needed to be addressed, Cobban warned.

"Almost none of them would even be in Syria right now had Turkey not systematically funneled them into Syria from 2012 through 2015. The world, including Syria, needs to hold Turkey accountable for that!" she said.

The key issue facing Damascus now was how soon Syria could get rid of all armed foreign interventions, and then start to heal again, Cobban added.