Erdogan’s Impatience Over Syria Zone Risks Standoff With U.S.
Erdogan Signals Syria Incursion After Failing to Meet With Trump
(Bloomberg) -- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled Turkey may soon launch an incursion into Syria to retake border areas from an American-backed Kurdish force, even as the U.S. warns against a unilateral Turkish operation.
Erdogan’s impatience to expand a previously agreed security zone in Syria grew after he failed to nail down a meeting with President Donald Trump in New York this week. The security zone is designed to be off-limits to U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey regards as a threat to its territorial integrity.
Trump’s top Syria envoy, James Jeffrey, said on Thursday that “any unilateral operation is not going to lead to an improvement in anyone’s security,” as it could derail the fight by Kurdish forces against Islamic State, a top priority for the U.S. in Syria.
Turkey suspects Washington backs Kurdish aspirations for self-rule in Syria and is getting ready to use its military to prevent an attempt to redraw the region’s maps.
”We are not happy with the point we’ve reached. We’ve clearly told this to Americans,” Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in New York on Friday, according to the Hurriyet newspaper. “If we can’t reach an agreement with the U.S., we would clear the terrorist organization,” from border areas inside Syria, he said.
Erdogan has threatened an incursion if he doesn’t get his way by month’s end. “Time is marching on, we’ve taken all our precautions along the border,” he said in New York on Wednesday, according to remarks published by Turkish media on Friday.
Safe Zone
More than 3.6 million Syrian refugees fled their country’s civil war to neighboring Turkey, which now hopes to resettle some of these people in a planned “safe zone,” in the north-east of Syria.
Turkey has undertaken a preliminary study to settle 1 million refugees inside the buffer zone. According to a copy of the plan shared with other countries at the UN summit this week and seen by Bloomberg on Friday, Turkey would build villages and towns for the refugees at an estimated cost of about $26 billion, which would need to be paid for by the international community.
Turkey-U.S. Tensions
For Turkey to achieve its goal of a safe zone, the U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia need to be pushed farther south. The YPG, which played a leading role in defeating Islamic State, has been at the heart of Turkey-U.S. tensions. Erdogan sees the fighters as a top threat due to their link to the separatist PKK, a Kurdish group Turkey’s been battling for decades and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union.
Erdogan Vows to Act Alone If No Syria Buffer Zone by Month’s End
A report published this week by the Syria Study Group -- established by Congress to make policy recommendations on the conflict -- said a Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria would represent “a major setback to U.S. aims in Syria and a new crisis for the U.S.-Turkish relationship.” A third Turkish offensive in Syria “would severely complicate the U.S. military campaign against ISIS,” the report said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Any flare-up of tensions between Turkey and the U.S. over Syria could deepen the mistrust on both sides of the alliance which are yet to overcome differences over Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system.
The Trump administration suspended Ankara from the advanced F-35 fighter jet program and is considering added sanctions, saying the Russian S-400 missiles could compromise the American aircraft’s stealth capabilities.
To contact the reporters on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net;Firat Kozok in Ankara at fkozok@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, ;Paul Sillitoe at psillitoe@bloomberg.net, Adveith Nair
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