US: Syria job is done

Trump lifts sanctions on Turkey and cedes power to Ankara

US President Donald Trump has ended sanctions against Turkey, drawing a line under American involvement in “bloodstained” Syria, as Turkish and Russian troops seized territory previously held by US troops and their beleaguered Kurdish allies.

“Let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand,” Mr Trump said in a White House speech that formalised the ceding of power in northern Syria to Ankara and increasingly influential Moscow.

Mr Trump said he was lifting the sanctions because a ceasefire was holding in the area, which Turkey invaded to drive Kurdish military groups from their strongholds. He called the ceasefire, which allowed the Turkish takeover to proceed largely unopposed, a “major breakthrough”.

Rejecting accusations that he betrayed the Syrian Kurds – who suffered thousands of casualties fighting alongside US troops against the Islamic State jihadist group – Mr Trump said they were happy.

The President said the Kurdish commander in the country, Mazloum Abdi, said he was “extremely thankful”.

Ankara ordered a crossborder operation into Syria on

October 9 because it said it wanted to create a security cordon free of Kurdish armed groups that it considers to be terrorists, linked to Kurdish rebels inside Turkey.

The long-planned operation started after Mr Trump announced the exit of the small, but politically significant US military force which had until then been closely allied with the Kurds. Mr Trump said he didn’t want the US troops caught in the middle of a Turkish-Kurdish war. “The job of our military is not to police the world,” he declared.

Accused both by Republicans and Democrats of abandoning the Kurds, Mr Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey on October 14 and sent a delegation to persuade Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to order a brief ceasefire.