US ENDS SANCTIONS ON TURKEY, QUITS ‘BLOOD-STAINED’ SYRIA
WASHINGTON—US President Donald Trump ended sanctions against Turkey on Wednesday as Turkish and Russian troops seized territory previously held by US troops and their beleaguered Kurdish allies.
“Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand,” Trump said in a White House speech that formalized the ceding of power in northern Syria to Ankara and increasingly influential Moscow.
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.
‘What betrayal?’
Rejecting accusations that he betrayed the Syrian Kurds— who suffered thousands of casualties fighting alongside US troops against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group—trump said they were happy.
The president said the Kurdish commander in the country, Mazloum Abdi, had just told him he was “extremely thankful.”
Ankara ordered a cross-border operation into Syria on Oct. 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.
Long-planned
The long-planned operation started after Trump announced the exit of the small, but politically significant US military force which had until then been closely allied with the Kurds.
Trump said he didn’t want the US troops caught in the middle of a Turkish-kurdish war.
Accused both by Republicans and Democrats of abandoning the Kurds, Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey on Oct. 14 and sent a delegation to persuade Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to order a brief ceasefire.
In a tweet from a spokesperson on Wednesday, Abdi thanked Trump “for his tireless efforts that stopped the brutal
Turkish attack and jihadist groups on our people.”
As US soldiers and the Kurds exited areas near Turkey’s border, Turkish troops and Russian troops, who have propped up Syrian President Bashar Assad through his country’s multisided civil war, moved in.
Shift of power
The first Russian patrol in northern Syria got underway on Wednesday, the defense ministry in Moscow announced.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu talked with Abdi and reassured him that civilians would not have to leave their homes, a spokesperson said— apparently addressing allegations that Turkey will seek ethnic cleansing in the region.
The Turkish-occupied area was calm, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor.
Kurds staged angry demonstrations on Wednesday in their de facto capital Qamishli.
“Turkey’s objective is to kill, displace and occupy the Kurds.”