Syrian rockets kill two in Turkey
US seeks to better ‘strategic partnership’
ANKARA: Presidents Donald Trump and Reccep Tayyip Erdogan faced off by phone Wednesday as the American warned Turkey not to risk a clash with US forces and the Turk demanded Washington stop backing a Kurdish militia.
On the fifth day of a Turkish assault against a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria, and with rockets fired into Turkey claiming civilian casualties, the leaders of the two NATO allies finally got in touch.
Mr Trump’s warning was stark. He asked Erdogan to “de-escalate” the attack on the Afrin canton, which is defended by the USbacked YPG militia, and warned him to “avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”
But he also sought to reassure the toughtalking Turkish leader. A White House statement about the call did not mention the YPG by name, and Mr Trump expressed hope that the capitals could work to “address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns”.
Turkey’s official account of the call noted Mr Erdogan had urged Mr Trump to cut off all US support for the Kurdish YPG and insisted “Operation Olive Branch” — the assault on Afrin — was an entirely legal defence of Turkey’s national security.
As the two leaders spoke, violence continued, in both Afrin — formerly a relatively stable pocket amid the chaos of Syria’s ongoing civil war —and in a neighbouring region of Turkey, where rockets fired from Syria killed two people and wounded 11 more.
The rockets, one of which hit and damaged a mosque, were fired in the early evening in the border province of Kilis. The second fell on a house 100 meters away, Kilis Governor Mehmet Tekinarslan said.
One Syrian and one Turk was killed, the governor’s office said, in attacks it blamed on the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units or YPG, a militia that Turkey sees as a Syrian offshoot of the banned PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.
Turkish artillery fire could be heard from the centre of Kilis.
Hours before the rockets, Mr Erdogan said Syrian opposition fighters and Turkish forces were “step by step taking control of Afrin” and that: “Until the last terrorist is neutralised, this operation will continue.”
The US supports Turkey’s fight against Kurdistan Works Party (PKK), a group which it too blacklists as an international terror organisation.
Indeed, in his call on Wednesday, Mr Trump pledged Washington and Ankara could improve their “strategic partnership” to better fight the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda and the PKK together.
But inside Syria, US troops have formed a close partnership with the YPG to fight the IS and — in parallel and to Turkey’s disgust — the Syrian Kurds have created autonomous governments in border cantons such as Afrin.
Turkey’s Nato allies are now concerned that Ankara’s cross-border incursions will impede the fight against the IS and harm efforts to bring peace to Syria after a nearly seven-year civil war.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkish jets struck border areas in northeast and northwest of Afrin aiming to force the YPG to move back and open the way for a ground advance. The Observatory said there was “fierce resistance” on the ground from the Kurdish fighters.
Three Turkish soldiers have been killed since the fighting began while the Observatory has said 48 Ankara-backed Syrian rebels and 42 US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and YPG fighters had been killed.