Last week’s meeting in Moscow of the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers appears to have led to the suspension of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threat to mount a major military operation against US-sponsored Syrian Kurdish forces engaged in the fight against Daesh. Erdogan regards the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as offshoots of Turkey's Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which has staged an insurgency since 1984. He blames the YPG for the November 15th bombing which killed six and injured 81 in a pedestrianized market in central Istanbul. The YPG has flatly rejected this charge.
