Trump warns Turkey as it continues its attack on Kurdish allies of the U.S.
President Donald Trump urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday to scale back his country’s assault on Kurdish positions in Syria, signaling mounting American anxiety that Ankara’s latest military foray will jeopardize the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State group and undermine hopes for peace talks aimed at ending the war in Syria.
But Turkey’s president Wednesday vowed to expand Ankara’s operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria beyond Afrin and toward the town of Manbij, which would bring Turkish troops and their Syrian allies closer to U.S. forces supporting the Kurds against IS, threatening friction.
In a call, Mr. Trump told Mr. Erdogan that the intensifying conflict in Kurdishcontrolled areas of northern Syria “risks undercutting our shared goals in Syria,” according to a White House statement that described the two leaders’ conversation in pointed terms.
Mr. Trump “urged Turkey to de-escalate, limit its military actions, and avoid civilian casualties and increases to displaced persons and refugees,” the statement said.
The Trump-Erdogan call took place less than a week after Turkey launched an offensive on Kurdish positions in Afrin, a Kurdish enclave along Syria’s border with Turkey. Ankara fears that Kurdish fighters in Syria with ties to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey will form a terror threat along the border.
The official told reporters in Ankara on Wednesday that the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Afrin are not part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which drove IS from much of northeastern Syria with the help of the U.S.-led coalition.
Kurdish groups have strengthened their control of areas across Syria in recent years as they have taken up arms in Syria’s civil war and, in some areas, battled IS with U.S. backing. As that campaign winds down, U.S. officials worry the days-old Turkish offensive will lead to another surge of violence and complicate a settlement of the war.
On Wednesday, Turkey said that 287 Kurdish or IS fighters had been killed, captured or had surrendered, according to a military statement carried by the semiofficial Anadolu news agency. Despite the Turkish claims, IS fighters are not known to be in the areas Turkey is attacking. A monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that at least 32 civilians and 42 Kurdish fighters had been killed in the offensive.
The operation has worsened U.S.-Turkish ties, which have been under increasing strain in recent months over a number of issues separate from their disagreements about Syria. Turkey has demanded that the U.S. extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania who Ankara accusedof masterminding an attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has become increasingly frustrated by Turkey’s apparently retaliatory detentions of American citizens, as well as employees of American consulates in the country.