Trump’s threat raises Turkish ire
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump threatened Turkey with economic devastation if it attacks a US-allied Kurdish militia in Syria, weakening the Turkish lira and prompting sharp criticism from Ankara yesterday.
Relations between the two Nato allies have been strained over US backing for the Kurdish YPG, which Turkey views as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.
A diplomatic crisis last year, when Trump imposed sanctions on two of President Tayyip Erdogan’s ministers and raised tariffs on Turkish metal exports helped push the Turkish lira to a record low in August.
Trump said on Sunday that the US was starting the military pull-out from Syria that he announced in December but that it would continue to hit Islamic State fighters there.
Trump wrote on Twitter: “Will attack again from existing nearby base if it reforms. Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds. Create 20 mile safe zone … Likewise, do not want the Kurds to provoke Turkey.”
The lira slid as much as 1.6%, to 5.5450 against the dollar.
Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said Trump should respect Washington’s alliance with Ankara.
“Mr DonaldTrump, it is a fatal mistake to equate Syrian Kurds with the PKK, which is on the US terrorists’ list, and its Syria branch PYD/YPG,” spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter.
“Terrorists can’t be your partners and allies. Turkey expects the US to honour our strategic partnership and doesn’t want it to be shadowed by terrorist propaganda,” he said yesterday.
Trump gave no details about the safe zone proposal. He announced last month he would withdraw US forces from Syria, declaring they had succeeded in their mission to defeat IS and were no longer needed.
However, US officials have given mixed messages since then. The US-led coalition said on Friday it had started the pull-out, but officials said later it involved only equipment, not troops.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara was not against the idea of a “secure zone” along the border, but added that strategic partners and allies should not communicate over social media.
“Nothing can be achieved by threatening Turkey economically. We need to look at how we can co-ordinate together and how we can solve this,” he said in a news conference with Luxembourg’s foreign minister.
The Kurdish YPG has been a US ally in the fight against the jihadists and it controls parts of northern Syria. Erdogan has vowed to crush it in the wake of Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of the region.
Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, said: “Turkey will continue its anti-terror fight decisively” and that it was a protector of the Kurds, not their enemy.
“Terror is terror and it must be eradicated at its source. This is exactly what Turkey is doing in Syria,” he wrote on Twitter.
Turkey has swept YPG fighters from Syria’s Afrin region and other areas west of the Euphrates River in military campaigns over the past two years. It is now threatening to strike east of the river, which it has avoided until now.
An official from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of militias led by the YPG, said on Sunday that IS militants were “living their final moments”.