The agreement President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 22 complements his recent green light from US President Donald Trump for Turkey’s military incursion into Syria against the formerly US-backed People's Protection Units (YPG).

Erdogan has in effect secured Moscow’s acceptance of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring against the YPG, launched Oct. 9. Ankara considers the YPG a Kurdish terrorist organization that threatens its security.

Only days before the Erdogan-Putin talks in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, Russian officials were openly speaking out against Ankara’s military incursion. Moscow’s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev, for example, declared Turkey’s offensive “unacceptable” and said, “Turkey has no right to permanently deploy its troops in Syria.”

The Sochi Memorandum issued after the Erdogan-Putin talks belies that position. Article 3 says the “status quo” in the zone 120 kilometers (75 miles) long and 30 kilometers (18 miles) deep between the village of Tell Abyad in the west and the city of Ras al-Ain in the east — which was captured by Turkey last week — will be maintained.