Over the weekend the United States and Turkey began their first joint patrols in the northern part of Syria along the border with Turkey. This comes after Ankara and Washington agreed last month to set up a “safe zone” along the Syrian-Turkish border that would serve as a buffer between the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG.
The American-backed YPG militias have led the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against Daesh, but many residents of border towns and villages are suspicious of Turkey's cooperation with the United States because they do not regard the US as a real ally of Turkey due to American support for the Kurdish forces.
Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting to establish a Kurdish autonomous region in southeast Turkey since the early 1980s.
Locals in the Turkish border towns of Akçaoba, Akçakale, and Ziyaret are in favour of creating a buffer zone but under the control of Turkey without US involvement. They believe that America is playing a double game and is in the region to further its own goals. That's the view of local resident Mahmut Sönmez:
“We want Turkey to control the ‘safe zone' because this issue is directly related to our security and the security of our country. We live right on the border, and the presence of YPG here worries us all very much. Our security will be ensured when the YPG units are withdrawn from the…
