Turkey asks U.S. to stop Kurds from shifting fighters in Syria

Militia’s transfer puts Washington in awkward spot

BEIRUT — The Turkish government took the extraordinary step Wednesday of asking the United States to stop Kurdish commanders from diverting their forces from areas of eastern Syria to the fight in Afrin in the west.

The request followed an announcement from the Kurdish forces, which are allied with the United States in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, that they intended to send 1,700 fighters from Deir el-Zour, a strategically important eastern province, to the fight against Turkey in Afrin, a Kurdish enclave.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, said his country had taken “the necessary steps” through official channels and “expected from the U.S. that it should absolutely step in” to prevent the movement of the Kurdish forces from Manbij to Afrin. “This is our most natural right,” Kalin added.

It was not clear why Kalin had referred to Manbij, a city at the westernmost point of the Syrian territory held by the Kurds, though it might have been cited as a way station for the troops as they moved toward Afrin.

There was no immediate U.S. response to the request by the Turks.

The fighting in Afrin is creating problems for the United States. The transfer of personnel from the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, is a blow to Washington’s effort to stamp out the last vestiges of the Islamic State.

On the diplomatic front, the Americans have insisted that although they are allied with the SDF in eastern Syria, they have no affiliation with the group in the northwest and will not aid any of its operations there. But with its Kurdish coalition allies now streaming to join the defenders in Afrin, that posture will be increasingly difficult to maintain. As a result, in Afrin, the Trump administration is finding itself awkwardly on the opposite side from Turkey.

The SDF said in a statement Tuesday that it had made a “painful decision” to move the fighters from Deir el-Zour to Afrin, citing “the failure of the international community” to pressure Turkey and “stop its madness within our Syrian borders.”

The role in Afrin of the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is the main component of the SDF, has raised tensions with Turkey, which considers the militia an extension of a separatist group that is active in Turkey and is listed as a terrorist group by both Ankara and Washington.