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Biden’s diplomatic triage in Turkey

Ankara reconsiders its Syria policy amid strains in US-Turkey ties and a reset in Iran-Turkey diplomacy.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (R)and US Vice President Joe Biden (L) hold a joint press conference following their meeting on August 24, 2016 at the Cankaya Palace in Ankara.
US Vice President Joe Biden on August 24, 2016 said Washington had made clear that pro-Kurdish forces in Syria must not to cross west of the Euphrates River, a prospect alarming for Turkey. His comments come after Turkish troops launched an operation inside Syria to cleanse the key town of Jarabulus from Islamic State (IS) jih

It is no secret that the Aug. 24 Turkish military incursion into Jarablus, which sits less than 30 kilometers (roughly 19 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border, was secondarily about the Islamic State (IS) and primarily about checking the advances of the People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria, as Cengiz Candar recounts this week.

Metin Gurcan, citing sources in Ankara, reports that IS “had been withdrawing from Jarablus for two weeks. The YPG had been preparing to move north to capture Jarablus, but Ankara pre-empted the move through [Operation] Euphrates Shield. Ankara's action is further confirmation that the true target of the operation is not IS, but to block YPG’s domination of northern Syria.”

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