Turkey will take over the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria as the United States withdraws its troops, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in the latest upheaval wrought by Washington’s abrupt policy shift.
The surprise announcement by US President Donald Trump this week that he would withdraw roughly 2 000 troops has felleda pillar of American policy in the Middle East. Critics say Trump’s decision will make it harder to find a diplomatic solution to Syria’s seven-year-old conflict.
For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States. Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State.
Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.
In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilise to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria- shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.
The news was less welcome for other US allies. Both France and Germany warned that the US change of course risked damaging the campaign against Islamic State, the jihadists who seized big swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014-15 but have now been beaten back to a sliver of Syrian territory.
Likewise, the US-backed militia spearheaded by the YPG said a Turkish attack would force it to divert fighters from the battle against Islamic State to protect its territory.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American troops may continue to operate against Islamic State in Syria. The Pentagon is considering using Special Operation teams based in Iraq to target militants in Syria, the official said.
The official emphasized that using special operators on the ground was one of many options being considered, was still in the planning stages and that no final decision had been made.
Islamic State launched an attack on Friday in Syria’s southeast against the US-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of militants.
“We will be working on our operational plans to eliminate ISIS (Islamic State) elements, which are said to remain intact in Syria, in line with our conversation with President Trump,”Erdogan said.
The Turkish president had announced plans last week to start an operation east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria to oust the YPG from the area that it largely controls. This week, he said the campaign could come at any moment. But on Friday, he cited the talk with Trump as a reason to wait.
“Our phone call with President Trump, along with contacts between our diplomats and security officials and statements by the United States, have led us to wait a little longer,” he said.
“We have postponed our military operation against the east of the Euphrates river until we see on the ground the result of America’s decision to withdraw from Syria.”
Erdogan said, however, that this was not an “open-ended waiting period” and that, due to past “negative experiences”, Ankara welcomed the United States’ statements with an equal amount of pleasure and caution.
Turkey has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it says is the slow implementation of a deal with Washington to pull YPG fighters out of Manbij, a town in mainly Arab territory west of the Euphrates in northern Syria.
The United States will probably end its air campaign against IS in Syria when it pulls out troops, US officials have said. Erdogan’s foreign minister said the withdrawal plan would be discussed by the two countries in Washington in January.
