Trump, Erdogan vow friendship despite anger at U.S. arming Syrian Kurds

Trump, Erdogan vow friendship despite anger at U.S. arming Syrian Kurds

Posted on May 17, 2017 

WASHINGTON,— U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood side by side at the White House on Tuesday and promised to strengthen strained ties despite the Turkish leader’s stern warning about Washington’s arming of Syrian Kurdish militia.

Fresh from securing his grip on Turkey with a referendum to enhance his powers, Erdogan came to the Oval Office with complaints about US support for Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) and what Ankara says is Washington’s harboring of the mastermind of a failed coup.

But both leaders also tried gamely to put a brave face on their differences and to renew a key alliance between NATO’s leading power and its biggest Muslim member, partners in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

“It is absolutely unacceptable to take the YPG-PYD into consideration as partners in the region, and it’s going against a global agreement we reached,” Erdogan said, referring to the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.

“In the same way, we should never allow those groups who want to change the ethnic or religious structures in the region to use terrorism as a pretext,” he added, suggesting that the Kurds are using the anti-IS fight as cover for separatist nationalism.

U.S regards the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG, which is part of SDF alliance, as key ally against Islamic State and the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and has provided them with arms, air support as well as the military advisers. The Kurdish militia has seized swathes of Syria from IS.

Trump was one of the first leaders to congratulate Erdogan on winning the April 16 vote to strengthen his office, and his Turkish counterpart repaid the compliment on Tuesday by hailing his host’s “legendary triumph” in the US presidential race.

“Of course Mr Trump’s victory has led to an awakening of new expectations for Turkey and the region it is in. We know the new US administration will not let these hopes be in vain,” Erdogan said.

The US leader paid tribute to Turkey’s historical contributions to the Western alliance’s Cold War battles and promised: “Today we face a new enemy in the fight against terrorism and again we seek to face this threat together.”

Attempted coup

Washington and Ankara are bitterly at odds over US support for the YPG, a Syrian armed faction that acts as the main ground force in the Pentagon’s plan to defeat the Islamic State group but that Turkey deems a front for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

And Erdogan remains angry that the United States continues to host Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, a former ally who chose exile in Pennsylvania and who has now been accused of masterminding last year’s bloody attempted coup in his homeland.

While the pair shared warm words at their joint public appearance, Erdogan again made it clear that he would never accept an autonomous YPG-led Kurdish area in Syria, and that he had “frankly communicated” his expectation that Washington hand over Gulen.

After their meeting, Trump and Erdogan exchanged friendly tweets.

The US leader said it was a “great honor” to welcome his guest and the Turk responded by thanking him and declared: “I believe today’s meeting will strengthen our longstanding alliance and strategic partnership.”

Sinjar offensive

Trump hoped to secure at least grudging Turkish agreement not to oppose the US-led drive by Kurdish YPG fighters to oust the Islamic State from their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

In return, Trump may have had to give Erdogan assurances that Gulen will be closely monitored while the US courts examine an extradition request and pledge that Washington will eventually endorse a Turkish offensive against PKK bases in Sinjar, northern Iraq.

“That’s the main ask,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy. “He’s going to want US support for a Turkish operation against Sinjar.”

Turkish officials had spoken enthusiastically about Trump’s election as a chance to turn a new page.

But hopes could have been dashed last week when the Pentagon confirmed that it has increased its support for the YPG by directly arming its fighters ahead of the battle to oust the Islamic State from its de facto capital in Syria.

Ankara regards the YPG as simply the Syrian arm of the “terrorist” PKK, which has waged a deadly insurgency inside Turkey since 1984, and Erdogan is worried his deadly enemy will find itself in charge of a US-armed statelet on his southern frontier.

Turkey fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syrian Kurdistan that will not be loyal to Ankara would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds.

After Erdogan left the White House, tensions over the Kurdish issue spilled out into the streets of Washington.

According to witnesses, a brawl erupted when the Turkish president’s security detail attacked protesters carrying the flag of the Kurdish PYD party outside the ambassador’s residence.

City police reinforcements restored order, but emergency services said nine people were injured and taken to hospital, one of them in critical condition.

Syrian Kurdistan’s ruling PYD has established three autonomous zones, or Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016 Syria’s Kurds declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan. On Dec. 30, 2016 have approved a blueprint for a system of federal government in Syrian Kurdistan, reaffirming their plans for autonomy in areas they have controlled during the civil war.


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