The U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militant People's Protection Units (YPG) said Tuesday it would withdraw from Manbij under the U.S.-Turkey deal.
"Now, after more than two years of continuous work and with the Manbij Military Council being self-sufficient in their training, the YPG has decided to pull its military advisers from Manbij," it said in a statement.
The YPG is expected to retreat to the east of the Euphrates River, meeting a long-standing demand by Ankara.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met in Washington to back a "roadmap" whose rough outlines had been set last month, according to the State Department.
It said the diplomats would coordinate on "security and stability in Manbij," but gave no details.
Turkish officials suggested a plan had been hashed out under which the withdrawal would be complete within six months, with Kurdish militants giving up their weapons as they leave Manbij.
The U.S. wouldn't discuss whether the Kurdish militants would have to give up weapons, and insisted the plan included only "estimated timelines" based on events on the ground and no hard deadlines.
First, "joint U.S-Turkish patrols will be dispatched along a pre-existing demarcation line around Manbij," senior State Department officials said, in a sort of trust-building exercise to pave the way for a withdrawal.
American support for YPG militants in Syria has become a major sore point in relations between the U.S. and Turkey.
Wess Mitchell, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, said Tuesday that the Trump administration was trying to "stabilize the relationship" with concrete, near-term steps, in hopes of avoiding a wider breach that he warned could "do multigenerational damage" to ties between the allies.
Still, he put Ankara on notice that its partnership with the U.S. on the F-35 fighter jet program could be imperiled if it goes through with the Russian purchase.
"We will abide by the law," Mitchell said at the conservative Heritage Foundation, adding that "if they move forward with a sophisticated Russian weapons platform, they can expect to see it have a ripple effect for their participation in U.S. military industrial projects, and I think that includes F-35."
