Turkish forces on the Turkish-Syrian border before a joint patrol with Russian units, November 1, 2019 (Turkish Defense Ministry)

Maintaining his pressure for Turkish control of Kurdish areas of northeast Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has proclaimed the capture of 33,000 truckloads of weapons from the “terrorist” Kurdish militia YPG.

Speaking in western Turkey on Friday, Erdoğan claimed the Turkish military is chasing YPG fighters who are fleeing: “They run and we chase them. We have entered all of their hideouts. They wanted to establish a terror state in northern Syria.”

The weapons were given to the YPG by the US, which created the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in October 2015 to remove the Islamic State from northeast Syria.

That task was accomplished in March, with the capture of the last ISIS-held village, near the Iraq border. But Turkey, which considers the YPG as part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK, launched an offensive on October 9 to take over the Kurdish cantons of Kobani and Cezire.

Erdoğan declared a “safe zone” 480 km (270 miles) long and 30 km (19 miles) deep along the Turkish-Syrian border, extended east across the Euphrates River to Iraq. He said up to 2 million of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey would be resettled in the area.

Alongside Syrian anti-Assad forces, the Turkish military captured territory between the towns of Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad. Then on October 22, Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a 10-point agreement for Turkish-Russian military oversight of the zone, including YPG withdrawal.

Three days before the offensive, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the matter, accepting the Turkish offensive and ordering the departure of 1,000 US troops from northern Syria. The Pentagon has pushed to retain hundreds of personnel, with the rationale that they are protecting Kurdish-held oilfields, but the force is outside the Erdoğan-declared zone.

Map: T-Intelligence 2019 (www.t-intell.com)