ANKARA, Dec 22 (Reuters) – A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkey’s foreign and defence ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and U.S. officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkey views the U.S.-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organisation and has warned of military action if the group does not honour the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defence Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkey’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkey has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganising the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkey sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkey and the unity of Syria.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren Butler and Gareth Jones)
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