Trump: I have not abandoned the Kurds
Turkey says northeast Syria invasion plans complete
US President Donald Trump insisted on Tuesday that he had not abandoned Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria as Turkey said its preparations for a crossborder invasion were complete.
The new crisis began when Trump ordered US troops to begin pulling out on Monday from their posts in a crucial area of the Turkey-Syria border, apparently giving a green light for Turkey to launch long-planned operations inside Syria against the Kurdish militias of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it views as terrorists.
Trump’s decision provoked a backlash in Washington because the YPG are the main component of the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), who fought alongside US troops to drive Daesh out of Syria.
The president appeared to backtrack on Tuesday, and defended the YPG. “We may be in the process of leaving Syria, but in no way have we abandoned the Kurds, who are special people and wonderful fighters,” he said. Trump did not say he opposed any operation by Turkey against the Kurds, but warned that “unforced or unnecessary fighting” would lead to “devastating” consequences for the Turkish economy.
Nevertheless, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said preparations for an offensive in northern Syria “have been completed,” and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it could “come any night, without warning.”
The Assad regime has welcomed the upheaval as an opportunity to bring the Kurds back into its fold. They had been “tossed aside” by Washington, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said. Analysts speculated that Russia would probably support attempts by the regime to regain control of parts of Syria not seized by Turkey, and a military operation against Syrian Kurds may pave the way for a Russian-brokered deal between Damascus, Turkey and the Kurds.
“President Vladimir Putin clearly expressed several times that Russia understands Turkish security concerns in northeast Syria, so Moscow isn’t against Ankara’s plans to create a buffer zone,” Alexey Khlebnikov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, told Arab News. A Turkish incursion could make Syrian Kurds more amenable to talks with Damascus, Khlebnikov said, and the situation in northeast Syria should be viewed together with the issue of Idlib province in the northwest. Russia and Turkey are co-guarantors of the “deescalation zone” in Idlib, where the withdrawal of extremist organizations has still not been fully achieved.
“It seems there’s a certain agreement between Putin and Erdogan that envisages a sort of swap: Damascus and Russia get a bigger part of Idlib … in exchange for not objecting to a Turkish operation in northeast Syria,” Khlebnikov said. “This way, Russian-Turkish cooperation on Syria isn’t threatened.”