ISTANBUL -- A senior Syrian Kurdish official said Saturday that his forces will pull back from a border area in accordance with a U.S.-brokered deal, but only after Turkey allows the evacuation of its remaining fighters and civilians from a besieged town there.
Under the U.S. agreement with Turkey, a cease-fire has been in place since Friday evening. It is set to last for five days, during which Kurdish fighters are supposed to pull back from border areas.
Redur Khalil, a senior Syrian Democratic Forces official, said Saturday the plan for evacuation from the town of Ras al-Ayn is set for today, if there are no delays.
He said that after Turkey allows the evacuation, his force will pull back from a 75-mile area between the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal-Aybad. It will withdraw and move back from the border 19 miles.
This is the first time the Kurdish force has publicly acknowledged it will withdraw from the border, saying it has coordinated it with the Americans. The agreement has not specified the area of its pullback.
Previous agreements between the U.S. and Turkey over a "safe zone" along the Syria-Turkish border floundered over the diverging definitions of the area. Turkey wants the zone to resettle Syrian refugees now in Turkey.
Khalil said a partial evacuation happened earlier Saturday from Ras al-Ayn after much stalling and with U.S. coordination.
Later Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that under the current plan all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq, and that the military will continue to conduct operations against the Islamic State extremist group to prevent a resurgence in that country.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him to the Middle East, Esper did not rule out the idea that U.S. forces would conduct counterterrorism missions from Iraq into Syria. But he said those details will be worked out over time.
His comments were the first to lay out where American troops will go as they leave Syria and what their fight against the Islamic State could look like.
The U.S. currently has more than 5,000 American forces in Iraq. The U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011 when combat operations there ended, but they went back in after the Islamic State group began to take over large swaths of the country in 2014.
Until this month, about 1,000 U.S. forces were deployed in parts of northeast Syria alongside Kurdish-led forces. Esper said he has spoken to his Iraqi counterpart about the plan to shift more than 700 troops leaving Syria into western Iraq. The remaining U.S. troops, between 200 and 300, will remain at the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf.
President Donald Trump's announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Syria opened the way for Turkey's invasion on Oct. 9 -- shortly after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received a letter from Trump urging him to act in a humane way in Syria.
Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, told The Associated Press that he was stunned by the tone and content of the letter, which warned Erdogan that the world "will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!"
Kalin, who received the letter and presented it to Erdogan in his capacity as a senior adviser, said the Turkish president "asked me to convey our message to the Americans that we reject this letter completely in its style as well as in its substance."
Erdogan on Friday said he and Trump share "love and respect," but he also told reporters he would not forget the letter and would "do what's necessary" about it, without elaborating.
Erdogan wants Syrian government forces to move out of areas near the Turkish border so it can resettle up to 2 million refugees there, Kalin said Saturday, adding that Erdogan will raise the issue in talks this week with Syria's ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kalin said Ankara does not want Kurdish fighters to be able to continue to operate in border areas under control of Russian-backed Syrian forces. He said Syrian forces should move out of border areas because the Syrian refugees Turkey wants to resettle "don't want to go back to areas under regime control."
"This is one of the topics that we will discuss with the Russians, because, again, we are not going to force any refugees to go to anywhere they don't want to go," he said.
Turkey has taken in about 3.6 million Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland but wants most of them to return.
Turkey also said Saturday it has recaptured 41 suspected members of the Islamic State who had fled a detention camp last week.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 195 other suspected Islamic State members had already been recaptured. He said the captured suspects would be relocated to areas controlled by Turkey in northern Syria.
Erdogan has accused Syrian Kurdish forces of releasing about 750 Islamic State members and families amid Turkey's offensive. The Kurds say they broke out of their camp a week ago, attacking guards, as the Kurds shifted their focus to heavy clashes and Turkish airstrikes nearby.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeynep Bilginsoy, Lolita C. Baldor and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/20/2019