Turkey Readies Major Attack on Northeast SyriaU.S. and Kurdish officials expect Turkey to launch a military operation within 24 hours as Trump tries to backpedal.
BY LARA SELIGMAN | OCTOBER 8, 2019, 4:04 PM
A Turkish army's tank drives down from a truck as Turkish armed forces drive towards the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019. (Photo by BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. and Kurdish officials said late Tuesday that they expect Turkey to launch a major offensive into northeast Syria within the next 24 hours, after U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to give Ankara the green light to begin the operation.
The preparations come as the administration sought to backpedal on Trump’s surprise Sunday announcement, following a telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he was ordering the withdrawal U.S. troops from the border with Turkey, paving the way for Ankara to move forward with a potentially devastating attack on America’s Kurdish allies.
State Department officials told Kurdish leaders on Tuesday that any Turkish attack would be met by harsh economic and political sanctions, Bassam Saker, the Syrian Democratic Council’s (SDC) representative to the United States, told Foreign Policy. The SDC is the political arm of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the mostly Kurdish militia responsible for liberating northeast Syria from the Islamic State.
But it appears Turkey has not been dissuaded by the threat of U.S. sanctions. Turkish officials informed the U.S. embassy that the operation will begin within a day, a senior U.S. administration official told Foreign Policy late Tuesday. Two Kurdish officials confirmed that timeline. Meanwhile, Turkey began shelling an SDF border outpost earlier in the day.
“The border areas of NE #Syria are on the edge of a possible humanitarian catastrophe,” said Gen. Mazloum Kobani, commander of the SDF, in a Twitter post. “This attack will spill the blood of thousands of innocent civilians.”
Kurdish fighters are moving north toward the border “in significant numbers,” the senior administration official said, leaving few forces to guard prisons across the country overflowing with Islamic State fighters and fend off the remnants of the terrorist group.
Indeed, the Islamic State on Tuesday conducted multiple suicide bombings on SDF positions in the city of Raqqa, according to the group.
[ Yep, IS is still there and now, Trumpamerica is allied with it. ]
The impending Turkish offensive was set in motion as U.S. administration officials tried to downplay Trump’s shift in policy. During the meeting between State Department and SDC representatives, U.S. officials stressed that the Sunday statement was not a “green light” for Turkey to invade, Saker said.
The comments reflect the administration’s attempts to clarify a series of presidential tweets since Sunday night, including one in which Trump appeared eager to reassure critics, including many of his fellow Republicans, that he was not caving to Erdogan’s demands. In that tweet, Trump promised to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey” if Ankara “does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.”
Meanwhile, reports emerged that the SDF is considering partnering with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against Turkish forces. Assad has reached out to the Kurds in recent days, one Syrian source said.
Defense Department and White House officials also attempted to thread the policy needle on Monday. Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman pushed back on characterization of the Sunday statement as an endorsement of the Turkish operation, saying that senior leaders would reiterate to their Turkish counterparts “the possible destabilizing consequences.”
Defying Pentagon, Trump Endorses Turkish Operation in Syria
The move caught senior defense officials by surprise.
REPORT | LARA SELIGMAN
A senior administration official sought to minimize Trump’s initial tweet in a phone call with reporters late Monday, saying the president decided to move the “50 to 100” U.S. special operators near the border out of the area so they would not be in danger if fighting breaks out between the Turks and the Kurds.
“For anyone to characterize the fact that the president is taking care to make sure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are safe as somehow being a green light for a massacre is irresponsible and doesn’t comport with the reality of the situation,” a senior administration official told reporters during the Monday phone call.
When whether representatives from the Pentagon or U.S. Central Command had spoken to their Kurdish counterparts about the situation, a Defense Department spokesperson told Foreign Policy “we are in close communication with our Coalition partners, with particular focus on those who have equities in Syria.”
The Turkish government on Tuesday pushed back on Trump’s threats to impose sanctions on the country’s already fragile economy in the event of an attack on the Kurds. In a speech at a university in Ankara, Turkey’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, said his country would “not react to threats.”
Since Sunday night’s announcement, the president and various U.S. government agencies have sent wildly conflicting signals. Early Monday, Trump doubled down on his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the border, acknowledging the Kurds’ role in the fight against the Islamic State but saying that they “were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so.” But then on Tuesday he seemed to soften his stance, tweeting that “We may be in the process of leaving Syria, but in no way have we Abandoned the Kurds, who are special people and wonderful fighters.”
However, he also praised Turkey, which has repeatedly threatened to annihilate the Kurds, as a “big trading partner” and “an important member in good standing of NATO.”
Saker said he trusts that the State Department and Congress are opposed to a Turkish invasion of northeast Syria and will act as a check on the president. Indeed, lawmakers from both parties have come out publicly to criticize Trump’s decision and promise to impose sanctions on Turkey if Ankara attacks the Kurds.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, normally one of the president’s most vocal supporters, said the move is “a big win for Iran and Assad, a big win for ISIS,” and promised to do everything in his power to sanction Turkey “if they step one foot in northeastern Syria.”
Turkey has long objected to U.S. support for the SDF, which is responsible for liberating northeast Syria from the Islamic State and is currently guarding thousands of the militant group’s fighters in prisons across the country. The SDF is a mostly Kurdish fighting group that Ankara views as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.
Now that U.S. troops are no longer blocking a Turkish operation, the SDC fears that Ankara will launch a bloody campaign to annihilate the Kurdish population of northeast Syria, as it did last year when it swept into the northwest town of Afrin.
Erdogan has also proposed resettling millions of Syrian refugees, including those from Arab communities, in the northeast border area, a move that experts worry could upend the delicate ethnic balance in the historically Kurdish region.
Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and former senior Obama administration official, said the proposal is against international law.
“All across Northern Syria, hundreds of thousands of displaced and conflict-affected people who survived the horrors of the [Islamic State] era will now face the risk of new violence between Turkish and SDF forces,” Konyndyk said. “Turkey may also use the zones as a pretext for involuntarily expelling (or ‘refouling’) thousands of Syrian refugees who have found safety inside Turkey – which is prohibited by international law.”
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