US President Donald Trump warned Turkey not to attack Kurdish forces in Syria
As the US is pulling out its troops from Syria, President Donald Trump is warning Turkey not to attack the remaining Kurdish military and is threatening them with economic devastation. He is also saying he does not want the Kurds to provoke Turkey either.
The US president’s decision to pull out American troops out of Syria has left US Kurdish allies in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group vulnerable to an attack from Turkey. That is because Ankara views the US-backed forces of Kurdish YPG as terrorists, however, Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wanted to point out on Twitter that Turkey “fights against terrorists, not Kurds” as a people.
President Trump also did not say how Turkey’s economy would suffer if it attacked the YPG, and after mentioning in his tweets the creation of a “20-mile safe zone” he did not detail where it would be located, or who would create, enforce or pay for that. According to BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher that hints at the kind of solution Mr Pompeo is trying to negotiate.
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s top diplomat, is known to be out visiting several countries trying to reassure Kurdish allies in the fight against Isis. He declared he had spoken to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu by phone and was “optimistic”, while in Abu Dhabi he stated the US recognized “the Turkish people’s right and Mr Erdogan’s right to defend their country from terrorists”. “We also know that those fighting alongside us for all this time deserve to be protected as well,” he added.
Source: theguardian.com
