Turkey support key as US seeks to hold on in Syria

WASHINGTON: The Islamic State group may be on the run from its last bastion in Syria but the United States is gearing up for a longer stay in the country.

And if US forces are to counter Iranian and Russian influence as Syria struggles to emerge from civil war, they will need Turkey’s help.

But Washington’s relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s testy government have been strained of late, posing a diplomatic challenge.

So when US President Donald Trump called his counterpart Friday, he needed to make a significant gesture — and he seems to have delivered.

Tensions remain high, but Trump’s apparent promise not to send any more weapons to the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia was a key concession to Ankara.

Without it, a major Nato ally might have moved closer to Iran and Russia, who are battling to save Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime.

Some in Washington and the region may see it as a betrayal of a battlefield ally that was instrumental in capturing the IS capital Raqa.

But the Kurds now have the strength to hold their own in northeastern Syria, and Washington is turning to the bigger picture.

“We can’t operate in the long term in Syria without Turkish bases and Turkish airspace and to some degree Turkish diplomatic support,” said former US ambassador James Jeffrey.

“So that’s what the call is all about,” Jeffrey, a former senior US national security adviser and envoy to both Ankara and Baghdad, told AFP in Washington.

Syria has been ensnared in civil war between Assad and an array of armed groups since 2011, and the chaos allowed IS to seize part of the east.

US commanders mobilised a coalition — including the YPG — to take on the jihadists, and the Kurdish Syrian fighters were in the vanguard when Raqa fell last month.

Turkey, a Nato ally, was nominally part of the US-led coalition, but in led its own intervention into northern Syria, battling extremists but also the Kurdish forces.

The YPG is an offshoot of the same movement as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is waging a separatist insurgency inside Turkey.

According to Jeffrey, who as a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is still in touch with senior Turkish figures, “nothing drives Erdogan more crazy” than US backing for the YPG.

But at the same time, Ankara and Washington share an interest in countering Russia and Iran’s influence in Syria and in shaping the country’s future as peace talks loom.

After Friday’s call, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trump had promised arms supplies would halt and “essentially he said this nonsense should have been ended earlier.”

The White House was less explicit, but confirmed Trump “informed President Erdogan of pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.”

The White House also underlined that both leaders had discussed the importance of the upcoming United Nations-backed Syrian peace talks due to start next week in Geneva.

This is important because Turkey is now also party to a parallel and potentially rival political process being conducted under Russian auspices in the Kazakh capital Astana. — AFP