page_title: Northern Syria Buffer Zone
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Northern Syria Buffer Zone / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Claimed territory of Rojava (in orange) not currently under control and the de facto territory controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (in green).
context_page_description: The Northern Syria Buffer Zone was a temporary Syrian Civil War demilitarized zone established on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border in August 2019 to maintain security along the border and to dissuade a prospective Turkish invasion of the self-proclaimed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The DMZ was administered by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their military councils and enforced by United States Armed Forces and Turkish Armed Forces personnel.
  The buffer zone collapsed in early October 2019, before it was fully implemented, when Turkey dismissed the agreement on 1 October and the United States abandoned the effort on 6 October after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, allowing for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's planned ground incursion into the region. The subsequent Turkish offensive on 9 October rendered the buffer zone fully obsolete.
  The failed Turkish-U.S. arrangement was replaced on 22 October 2019 with the separate Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone, negotiated between Russia, Turkey and the Syrian government.
context_section_description: The Syrian Democratic Forces are an armed participant in the Syrian Civil War and serve as the armed forces of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The SDF is composed of numerous groups, most prominent among them being the YPG and YPJ and their political branch, the PYD, which Turkey considers a branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organization which Turkey considers a terrorist group and with which it has engaged in armed conflict since the breakdown of peace negotiations in 2015. For this reason, Turkey views the entire SDF as nothing more than an extension of the PKK. This has led Turkey to intervene twice against the group, first by invading Northern Syria to prevent the linking of SDF-held areas and later by starting a full-scale attack against the SDF in Afrin. As a result of the Turkish operations, Turkey has established an occupation zone in northern Syria, which was made the target of an SDF insurgency. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has frequently expressed a desire to forcefully remove the SDF from the Syrian-Turkish border.
  On the other hand, the SDF became one of the United States' main Syrian partners in the military intervention against ISIL, leading to U.S. troops being stationed along SDF-held territories, thus preventing a Turkish invasion. At the same time, US President Donald Trump has expressed his intention to disengage from the Syrian Civil War, initially ordering all US personnel in Syria to be withdrawn, before later deciding to leave a small contingent, at the behest of his military advisors. Nonetheless, the US is keen on maintaining good relations with Turkey, which had by that point already been strained by the refusal of the US to extradite Turkish dissident Fethullah Gülen (whom Turkey accuses of masterminding the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt) and the Turkish purchase of S-400 missile systems from Russia, as Turkey is considered NATO's key member in the Middle East.
  The US and Turkey had previously clashed diplomatically over the issue of the SDF-held city of Manbij, with Turkey wanting to purge the city of the YPG units stationed there. The result was a 'Manbij Roadmap' being agreed to by Turkey and the US, which would eventually entail a YPG withdrawal from the city. The roadmap, however, was never implemented and the YPG never withdrew. Turkey accused the US of dragging its feet and sabotaging the implementation of the roadmap, vowing to never enter into a similar deal in the future.
  Relations between Turkey and the SDF became increasingly hostile in mid 2019, with the SDF joining forces with the Syrian Government to repel a Turkish-opposition military operation near Tell Rifaat.
  The deputy secretary of defense for the Middle East, Michael Mulroy said at the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States cannot carry out its strategy in Syria without partners such as the mostly Kurdish SDF, who "bore most of the burden in destroying the Islamic State's caliphate". He said that the United States must not leave before stabilizing the area.  "And if we don't do that, we will be back there, for sure, doing this again," Mulroy said. "We owe it to the people that live there, who have beared unspeakable burdens, and we owe it to the men and women that are going to come after us at the State Department, at the Defense Department, that we don't just leave this undone."
caption: SDF-controlled territory (green) and Turkish-controlled territory (red)[dubious  – discuss]
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