Trump: I’ll destroy Turkish economy if Erdogan invades northern Syria
US troops begin pullout from border posts, paving way for attack on Kurdish militias
US President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to destroy Turkey’s economy if Ankara did anything in Syria that he considered “off limits.”
The warning came after Trump ordered US troops to begin pulling out of northeast Syria, apparently paving the way for a Turkish cross-border military incursion long promised by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to confront the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
US soldiers began withdrawing early on Monday from observation posts along the Turkish-Syrian border, at Tal Abyad and Ras Al-Ain.
However, the US pullout, which followed a telephone conversation between Trump and Erdogan, provoked a backlash in Washington. The State Department and the Pentagon said the US did not support a Turkish incursion into Syria, and influential senator Lindsey Graham — a leading Trump ally — warned that Turkey would face sanctions if it invaded.
“We made it clear to the Turks that we do not support this operation,” a State Department official said. “We think it is a very bad idea.”
Trump himself then appeared to change tack. “If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey (I’ve done it before!),” he said on Twitter. In its fight against Daesh, Washington has long backed the SDF, whose main component is the Kurdish YPG militias, which Ankara considers a terrorist group. The US pullout angered the Kurdish group, which said “American forces did not fulfil their commitments.” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara office director of the German Marshall Fund of the US, told Arab News the last thing Turkey or the US wanted was their troops clashing in Syria, and Turkey’s longterm goal was to eradicate the YPG from northern Syria.
“But this is close to impossible due to the YPG’s relations with the US, Russia and potentially the Syrian regime,” he said. “So Turkey is adopting a strategy through which it will change the facts on the ground in a limited way and continue negotiating with other actors.
“There are wide swaths of territory in northern Syria without a significant Kurdish population, and Turkey will probably limit its incursions to those territories for the time being.”