Tensions between
the U.S. and Turkey could further crumble after the Trump administration criticizes a Turkish military offensive against a Kurdishheld region of Syria.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday branded as “destabilizing” a Turkish military offensive against a Kurdish held region in neighboring Syria, threatening to further inflame tensions between the two NATO allies.
But U.S. officials also scrambled to backtrack from a U.S. plan to train a 30,000-member local security force on Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
Turkish officials were furious at the U.S. proposal, in part because Kurdish soldiers would make up most of the force, and warned it would cause irreparable damage to U.S.-Turkish ties.
While American forces battling Islamic State have long valued Kurds as a fighting force, Turkey regards most Kurdish militias to be a terrorist threat.
“It’s unfortunate that the entire situation has been misportrayed, misdescribed, some people misspoke,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters after unveiling the administration’s new Syria policy in a speech Wednesday at Stanford University. “We are not creating a border security force at all.”
In his speech, Tillerson said the administration would maintain a U.S. military presence — said to be 2,000 U.S. personnel — in Syria to keep pressure on Islamic State, to help counter Iranian influence and to help create conditions for a political solution to the country’s civil war.
President Donald Trump said in November the U.S. would stop arming the Kurds in Syria. Disclosure of the plan to build a force on the border appeared to reverse that pledge.
Turkey’s offensive against the Kurdish-held Afrin region of northwestern Syria has further complicated the relationship between Ankara and Washington. U.S. officials worry the attack could interfere with Pentagon.-led efforts to eliminate Islamic State pockets in the area.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is angry at what he perceives to be U.S. support for dissidents and his political enemies, who unsuccessfully tried to oust him in a coup in 2016.
“We ... have been quite consistent in our messaging to the highest levels of the Turkish government,” a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said Friday. “We support them in their concerns about a safe and secure Turkish Syrian border. We support them in their concerns regarding (Kurdish) terror in Turkey, no question.”