Coming back to the timeline, one day after the Obama-Erdoğan phone conversation on May 18, U.S. Gen. Joseph Votel of CENTCOM met Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish officials in Baghdad and Erbil.

On May 20, he flew to Syria, presumably to the PYD-held town of Kobane near the Turkish border, to have meetings with the PYD and also some Arab tribes which agreed to be part of the SDF.

On May 21 Votel first traveled to İncirlik and then to Ankara. There he carried out talks with Gen. Yaşar Güler, the deputy chief of Turkish General Staff, on the Manbij operation.