{"id":41005,"date":"2019-09-29T09:22:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T09:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41005"},"modified":"2019-09-29T09:22:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T09:22:37","slug":"yemen-vows-to-end-attempts-by-iran-backed-houthi-militia-to-divide-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41005","title":{"rendered":"Yemen vows to end attempts by Iran-backed Houthi militia to divide country"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes a new \u201csafe zone\u201d in northern Syria will kill two birds with one stone \u2014 easing the refugee burden and pushing Kurdish militants away from his southern border.
The US and Turkey have already launched joint patrols this month with the aim of establishing the \u201csafe zone.\u201d
But analysts say the scheme is unrealistic.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly this week, Erdogan unveiled a chart showing ambitious plans for the zone, that would be 30 km deep and run 480 km along the north of Syria.
He said it could eventually allow 2 to 3 million Syrian refugees to return to their country.
That has become a priority for Erdogan, who has faced a growing popular backlash over the presence of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey \u2014 the highest number in the world.
Turkish broadcaster TRT said on Friday that the first stage of the plan envisioned 1 million Syrians being resettled in 140 villages and 10 towns.
The plan would also create a buffer against Syrian Kurdish militants, who control much of the region.
The Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) has been a close ally of the West in the fight against Daesh, but Ankara sees them as a dangerous offshoot of Kurdish \u201cterrorists\u201d in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\n

\nHIGHLIGHT<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/h4>\n
\n
\n

\nThe Safe zone has become a priority for Erdogan, who has faced a growing popular backlash over the presence of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey \u2014 the highest number in the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe \u201csafe zone\u201d was first publicly mooted earlier this year by President Donald Trump as a way to stop Turkey attacking the YPG, as Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to do.
Experts are skeptical that the plan will come together, despite joint air and ground patrols by the US and Turkey this month.
The US has struggled to balance its ties with Turkey and the Kurdish YPG militia.
\u201cEven if efforts to create a \u2018buffer zone\u2019 succeed \u2014 and there is no sign that they will \u2014 the underlying source of tension will remain and with it, the potential for a Turkish military response to Ankara\u2019s perceived YPG threat,\u201d Dareen Khalifa, of the International Crisis Group, told AFP.
She also said the US has made it clear that Washington has \u201cnot signed off on any agreement that would entail involuntary relocation of Syrians to the northeast.\u201d
Despite the obstacles, however, Washington is desperate to prevent another unilateral attack by Turkey, which has already launched two cross-border operations against Daesh and the YPG, in 2016 and 2018.
Before his US visit, Erdogan warned that plans were already in place for a unilateral operation if there was no significant progress on the \u201csafe zone\u201d by the end of September.
According to Syria expert Fabrice Balanche, it is not possible to send 3 million people to the proposed region.
\u201cThe liveable area is limited since the majority of the space is semi-desert,\u201d he said, and the region east of the Euphrates river is \u201cvery under-developed.\u201d
It would also mean major demographic change, since the area is mostly Kurdish and 90 percent of Syrian refugees in Turkey are Arab.
Hasan Unal, foreign policy analyst at Istanbul\u2019s Maltepe University, said it would be difficult for both sides.
\u201cAre all these people from that part of Syria? If not, they might say: \u2018We don\u2019t want to go to somebody else\u2019s land\u2019,\u201d said Unal.
Erdogan has said the zone should extend to the eastern Deir Ezzor region and Raqqa, but Balanche said neither area was ready.
Raqqa still needs reconstruction after the Kurds led a bitter battle to recapture the city from Daesh in 2017.
According to Unal, the best way to repatriate Syrians would be in cooperation with the Syrian regime following a normalization of relations between Ankara and Damascus.
\u201cAs far as international law is concerned, you can\u2019t force them to move.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes a new \u201csafe zone\u201d in northern Syria will kill two birds with one stone \u2014 easing the refugee burden and pushing Kurdish militants away from his southern border.The US and Turkey have already launched joint patrols this month with the aim of establishing the \u201csafe zone.\u201dBut analysts say…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}