Situation on Turkish-Syrian Border as Withdrawal Deadline Comes to End

Kurdish forces announced that they had begun withdrawing from a safe zone near the north-eastern Syrian border with Turkey on 27 October.

The situation at the northern Syrian town of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish-Syrian border as the withdrawal deadline stipulated by the Russia-Turkey memorandum expires at 15:00 GMT. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 22 October adopted a memorandum to resolve the situation on the Syrian-Turkish border in light of Ankara’s offensive targeting the Kurdish militia there. According to the document, Russian military police and Syrian border guards are facilitating the withdrawal of Kurdish militia from an 18-mile zone on the border within a 150-hour timeframe that began on 23 October.

On 9 October, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring to clear the border area of Kurdish militants, labelled as terrorists by Ankara.