institute for international and security affairs there in berlin good morning marcus what do you make of the syrian army's plan to back kurdish militias fighting turkish forces in africa and i think it's a rather clever move because it serves two purposes first it keeps turkey it be a regime which always requested of president assad to be removed it would be a band that it. keeps the kurds at bay and allows the syrian regime to push you path of territorial integrity to keep syria together turkey has massive military resources and says it won't leave until the kurds have been ejected at least the kurdish why p.g. fighters is the kurdish syrian alliance capable of repel ng the turkish offensive indeed the turkish military capabilities are overwhelming it's the biggest military contributive nato with seven hundred thousand soldiers on the arms to be honest i'm not really through how fog took you will proceed or advance in northern syria because actually they have accomplished what they wanted to to accomplish to tame the kurds to put it this way and now the kurds obtain both the syrian r

all both things marcus kayyem from the german institute for international and security affairs in berlin with the latest on happenings there on the ground in syria thank you so much mark thank you. in other news here in germany the center left social democrats have started voting on whether to enter a second coalition with angela merkel's conservative party members have a little over a week to cast their ballots and the results will be announced on march fourth the deal has deeply divided the s.p.v. as rank and file and it's a battle that is pitting the party establishment against its future leaders. nothing is more important for the social democrats over the next ten days and these kind of town hall meetings the party's grassroot is deeply divided as to whether they should agree to a grand coalition deal or not and the face of the rebellion against american led coalition is this young man kevin kuhn at the leader of the party is used to going he's trying to get members to vote no. on. off i believe that we can explain to the people why a no vote to this grand coalition deal which i am c

table by marcus comm he is a middle east analyst with the german institute for international and security affairs here in berlin it's good to see you again see so now we're hearing that the russian president vladimir putin has ordered this polls to start to more daily polls. is that simple can say stop fighting and the fighting stops. really i mean it can. and do tell the syrian troops to stop the fighting but past experiences tell us that the islamist rebels where two groups being present in the eastern have no interest in stop the fighting and they will make the use this as some kind of pretext to renew the fighting to intensify as the fighting so i'm pretty skeptical that this will lead to opponents he sighs. it does not permit it timber riri. what's the purpose then to get humanitarian aid to the people who are in eastern hutu or to get those people out i mean we have to keep in mind because imputing is under tremendous pressure by the international community has been called today or yesterday about. a call in a phone call that a conference call has been pressured to do something and

and for more let's bring in melanie miller from the german institute for international and security affairs thank you so much for joining us thank you couldn't. we just heard there the a.n.c. secretary general saying let's leave it to zuma surely back cannot be a plan given zuma defiance and his refusal to step down so what do you think happens now going forward could zuma still be in power three months from now six months from now whether it does very difficult to say at the moment and i find it very difficult to speculate he has called for a press press briefing tomorrow morning. over see what is going on it doesn't seem that he's going to step down immediately because if he would do so have a plan to address the nation and not the media. you know. why not just hold a vote of no confidence in parliament why isn't the a.n.c. just doing that zuma would be pretty swiftly removed wouldn't he yes i think so but it would also make him look weak and i think. trying to avoid death because it would also make the organization who make up the organization because it's at least what a lot of people i