Bethan McKernan- The Guardian
Turkey’s foreign minister has reiterated that Turkish forces are determined to cross the Euphrates river into Kurdish-held territory in Syria as soon as possible, despite previous suggestions from both Washington and Ankara that Turkey would delay the proposed military campaign.
Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that “if Turkey says it will enter, it will”. While the foreign minister did not give a time frame, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said last week that Turkey would stall its offensive as part of coordination with the US over the planned withdrawal of US forces from the area.
Donald Trump surprised his administration and international partners alike last week with an announcement that the 2,000 special forces in Syria and airstrikes against Islamic State would cease in the next 60-100 days – a decision which prompted the resignation of both his defence secretary, Jim Mattis, and envoy to the coalition against Isis, Brett McGurk.
The US has long partnered with Syrian Kurdish-led forces in the battle against Isis, although Turkey views them as an extension of the separatist Kurdish PKK movement within its own borders whom it deems a terrorist group.
Trump’s decision was prompted by a phone call with Erdoğan earlier this month in which he had originally intended to stress to the Turkish leader that his threat against Syria’s Kurds must stop.
Turkey will take over the remnants of the fight to remove Isis from its last slivers of territory and has the “strength to neutralise” Isis on its own, Çavuşoğlu said. The future of the international coalition remains unclear.
The foreign minister also criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who has said French forces will remain in Kurdish-held Syria as a buffer.
“If France is staying in Syria to protect the YPG, that will neither benefit France nor the YPG,” he said, referring to the main Kurdish militia in Syria, adding that Turkey would take its cues on the matter from Washington, rather than Paris.
The White House confirmed Çavuşoğlu’s announcement that Trump has received an invitation to visit Turkey in 2019, although no date has been set for the trip.
The two Nato allies have come to an agreement on several issues that have divided them in recent years – chiefly, US support for Kurdish-led militias in Syria, and Turkey’s two-year-long detention of a US citizen, the pastor Andrew Brunson.
Brunson was released and returned to the US in October after a Turkish court suspended the remainder of his sentence for terrorism offences related to the failed 2016 military coup.
It is widely believed the catalyst for the sudden detente is the death of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this year. The US has sought to insulate its partners in Riyadh, including the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, from blame in the case.
Erdoğan alleges that the “highest levels” of the Saudi royal court were responsible for ordering Khashoggi’s death.
Turkey, along with other countries, is seeking a UN-led investigation into the unsolved case, Çavuşoğlu added on Tuesday.