Turkey's Erdogan threatens to "crush" former U.S. allies in Syria
Sanliurfa, Turkey — Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to "crush the heads" of America's former allies, the Kurdish-led forces in Syria, if they don't fully withdraw from the Turkey-Syria border by Tuesday evening. The five-day ceasefire that the Trump administration got Erdogan to agree to expires at 7 p.m. local time, or noon Eastern.
Erdogan has said if the Kurds aren't completely out of what he's dubbed a "safe zone," stretching across most of Syria's northern border and about 20 miles south into Syrian territory, his offensive against them will resume. Already it is said to have claimed dozens of civilian lives and has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
So as CBS News Holly Williams reports, the stakes were high on Tuesday as Erdogan met President Vladimir Putin in Russia. The future of Syria could be decided at their meeting; Russia is poised to step into the power vacuum the U.S. left behind when President Trump ordered American troops to leave northeast Syria earlier this month, effectively opening the door to a deadly Turkish offensive.
Those U.S. forces only numbered around 1,000, but with their Kurdish partners they were able to beat back ISIS and bring relative stability to a large swathe of Syria after six years of war.
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