The US encouraged the Kurdish-led SDF to sign a deal with the new Syrian government led by the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The leader of the SDF and Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), signed a deal for the SDF to be merged into the Syrian government and military on Monday.
The US-backed SDF controls northeast Syria, where about 2,000 US troops are deployed. The Trump administration has drawn up plans to withdraw from Syria, but a Pentagon official told Reuters that there was no sign that a pullout was imminent.
The signing of the deal came after a weekend of massacres of mainly Alawite civilians by HTS forces in northwest Syria. The Reuters report said the killings “nudged” the SDF deal along.
A senior regional intelligence source said the US played a very “crucial role” in getting the deal signed. The details of how exactly the SDF will merge with the HTS-led government still need to be worked out, but the agreement states that the Kurds will be able to have “constitutional rights.”
Sources told Reuters that they expected the deal to ease Turkish pressure on the Syrian Kurds, although the SDF continues to battle with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the agreement in a statement on Tuesday.
“The full implementation of the agreement reached yesterday in Syria will contribute to the country’s security and stability. The beneficiaries of this will be all our Syrian brothers and sisters,” Erdogan said.
“We attach great importance to the territorial integrity of our neighbor Syria, the preservation of its unitary structure, and the strengthening of its unity and stability,” the Turkish leader added.
Turkey considers the SDF the Syrian wing of the PKK, which has been battling Ankara for decades. The PKK’s jailed leader recently called for the group to disarm, which was followed by the PKK announcing a ceasefire with Turkey. But Turkey has continued military operations against Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq.
