After Bolton’s visit, tension rises between Turkey and US over troop pullout from Syria
Tensions between NATO allies US and Turkey flared again after President Donald Trump’s walking back on his commitment to withdraw rapidly troops from Syria and seek safety for a Kurdish militia, but experts think there is still room to cooperate.
“The pace and the way the US exit can be modified... but at the end, the withdrawal will happen. It has become inevitable,” Oytun Orhan, a researcher from the Ankara-based think tank Center For Middle Eastern Studies, told Xinhua.He is convinced that Trump will be “insistent” on a US military exit from war-torn Syria as he would like to use it as a bargaining chip against Russia and Turkey.
Washington’s backing of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in its war against the Islamic State (IS) pushed US-Turkish relations to a breaking point.
Ankara links the militia to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. Trump’s declaration of victory over IS and vow to quickly withdraw 2,000 US forces based mainly with the YPG ushered in hopes of a breakthrough in strained ties with Ankara.
However, apparently conceding to pressure from his administration, Trump said afterwards that the US exit would happen in a slower pace, which, according to specialists, could take many months or even years.
Trump sent on Tuesday his National Security Adviser John Bolton to Ankara for talks.
However, Bolton’s mission failed as he was snubbed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over remarks that he held on the faith of the YPG after Washington’s withdrawal from Syria.
Bolton held tense talks over Syria with Erdogan’s aide Ibrahim Kalin and other Turkish senior officials but afterwards, the US official canceled his press conference and headed for the airport.
During his speech in parliament, Erdogan vehemently criticized US proposals to assure the safety of the US-backed Kurdish group after the US exit, describing it as “unacceptable.”
Before arriving in the Turkish capital, Bolton seriously irritated the Turkish administration by stating that the US pullout is conditional on defeating the IS as well as Turkish assurances on the security of the YPG.
Bolton’s comments built on frictions that flared last Friday after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview that the US wanted to ensure that “the Turks don’t slaughter the Kurds” once its troops are out of the region.
Serkan Demirtas, political analyst and journalist, pointed out that Turkey is keen to differentiate between civilian Kurds and YPG fighters militarily equipped by the US Putting both in the same basket is unacceptable for Ankara. “From the Turkish perspective, the US should first clarify what they mean when they say ‘Kurds’,” he told Xinhua. “If it’s about civilian Kurds that have never been involved in terrorism, that would be fine for Turkey,” he added.