Trump Whipsaws on Turkey as Threat Follows Green Light on Syria
Trump Issues Warning to Turkey After Green Light for Incursion
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump appeared to backpedal after giving Turkey a green light to attack U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria, warning Ankara in a tweet that he would “totally destroy and obliterate” the country’s economy if it takes unspecified “off limits” actions.
The president drew fierce criticism Monday from congressional allies for a White House statement the previous night that the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way of a Turkish incursion into Syria. The announcement, which followed a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, marked an abrupt change in U.S. posture.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is normally a close Trump ally, said he would introduce bipartisan legislation to sanction Turkey if it invades Syria and suspend it from NATO if it attacks the Kurdish-led forces. He said Trump’s stance risks a comeback by Islamic State.
“ISIS is not defeated, my friend. The biggest lie being told by the administration is that ISIS is defeated,” Graham told “Fox and Friends” in a phone call Monday. “The caliphate is destroyed, but there’s thousands of fighters” still there.
In one of his multiple tweets on Monday, Trump said that Turkey must “watch over” some 12,000 captured Islamic State fighters and tens of thousands of their family members living in jails and camps in Kurdish-held territory.
He told reporters later during a White House event that “I’ve told Turkey, if they do anything outside of what we think is humane,” the country would “suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy.”
Trump’s latest statements cast U.S. policy in Syria into further confusion. Spokesmen at the White House and State Department haven’t elaborated on the Sunday statement or Trump’s subsequent tweets. Officials at the Pentagon and State Department told reporters that the U.S. still hopes that Erdogan won’t attack the Kurds even now that Trump has made clear that American forces wouldn’t interfere with an invasion that Erdogan has long sought to carry out.
The lira slumped the most since August as investors braced for a Turkish military operation in Syria.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been a close U.S. ally in the fight to defeat Islamic State. But Turkey considers Syria’s Kurdish militants terrorists, and Erdogan has said his forces were ready to begin a military operation against them in northeastern Syria imminently.
Trump sought to abruptly withdraw U.S. forces from Syria late last year, also after a call with Erdogan. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in December after Trump’s Syria decision. The president relented and agreed to leave a small troop presence in the country after pressure from advisers including Graham.
An adviser to the Syrian Democratic Forces said that Trump’s move will strengthen Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and Russia.
“The Kurds told me this morning they were going to fight,” Moti Kahana, an adviser to the Kurdish-led forces, said by telephone from New Jersey. “They have two options. They can partner with Iran and Assad in order to prevent Turkish intervention into Syria or face a fight against Turkey in the northern border area and with Iran” in the southeast.
Even if the Kurds don’t fight, Kahana said, “they will shift their alliance from the Americans” to Russia, Assad and Iran.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet that the U.S. is “an irrelevant occupier in Syria” and it’s “futile to seek its permission or rely on it for security.”
U.S. Rationale
In a briefing with reporters on Monday, two State Department officials said only about two dozen American soldiers from two outposts had actually been pulled back, and only a small distance. The U.S. opposition to Turkey’s plan to attack northeast Syria is undiminished, they said.
The officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said Erdogan announced his plan to move into Syria at the end of his Sunday phone call with Trump and sought U.S. support. They maintained that Trump restated his opposition but ordered troops moved back for two reasons: to get them out of harm’s way if an attack takes place and to make sure their presence didn’t signal tacit support for Turkey’s action.
The two officials said the U.S. still wasn’t planning on relinquishing its control of northeast Syrian air space and there hadn’t been any decision about a broader withdrawal of U.S. Forces.
Some Trump allies welcomed his change in position on Monday.
“It is not in our national interest to have a small U.S. force in the middle of a long-running dispute between our NATO ally Turkey and various Kurdish groups in Syria,” William Ruger, vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute, said in a statement.
--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs, Nick Wadhams and Tony Capaccio.
To contact the reporters on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net;Glen Carey in Washington at gcarey8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum
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