44 F
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

Turkey, US at Cross-Purposes in Syria as Their Allies Clash

Related Articles

-Advertisement-

Must read

A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter uses a mobile phone as he stands with fellow fighters in the town of Hisha, Syria, after they took control of the area from Islamic State militants, Nov. 14, 2016. The Pentagon sees the SDF as an effective fighting force against IS militants.

Fighting between Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), earmarked by the United States to retake Raqqa from Islamic State (IS) militants, is escalating dramatically.

The intensifying clashes are complicating Washington’s bid to use Kurdish-led forces to launch a full-scale assault on the jihadists’ self-proclaimed Syrian capital, and are maneuvering the U.S. and Turkey into ever greater cross-purposes in Syria, fear Western diplomats and analysts.

Battlefield success

More than 40 villages controlled by IS have fallen to the Kurdish-led forces since the launch on November 6 of Euphrates Wrath, a Washington-conceived operation involving the SDF pressing IS in the countryside north of Raqqa ahead of an assault on the city.

Some analysts question whether the SDF has the capability to overrun Raqqa but Pentagon spokesmen insist the SDF has been effective whenever it encounters IS and that it is capable of taking the city. A former commander of Western-backed Arab rebel militias, Gen. Salim Idris, told VOA he thinks the SDF could take the city. “That is if they get enough U.S. air power,” he said.

The U.S. has been supporting the SDF with weapons and airstrikes and has deployed hundreds of special forces and military advisers to assist the Kurdish-led forces that also include Turkmen and Arab militias considered renegades by many mainstream Arab rebel militias, many of which have also received U.S. support in the past.

US strategy

U.S. war planners hope that by pressing IS in Raqqa simultaneously as Iraqi forces are attacking Mosul, the terror group’s last remaining major urban stronghold in neighboring Iraq, the jihadists’ resources and manpower will be stretched thin, weakening their ability to defend either city and hastening their fall.

But clashes between Arab Syrian rebels who have been battling to oust the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the SDF, which is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of a separatist Syrian Kurdish party, have intensified dramatically the past few days, aggravating already strained relations between Washington and Ankara and undermining the push on Raqqa as well as complicating a multi-player battlefield that’s threatening to get even messier.

Turkey opposes the use of the SDF in an assault on Raqqa, an Arab majority city. SDF forces are now poised 28 kilometers from Raqqa’s city center.

Erdogan opposes use of Kurdish fighters

Speaking at a NATO forum in Istanbul Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upped his criticism of the U.S. for its use of the YPG, which Turkey insists is inseparable from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with which Ankara is locked in a vicious counter-insurgency fight in south-east Turkey that has seen widespread rights abuses, according to monitors.

U.S. officials prefer to view Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG military wing as separate from the PKK.

Erdogan argued it was wrong to “treat one terrorist as good for fighting other terrorist organizations.” And using an Arab acronym for IS, he added: “We expect your support for the struggle we are giving against all terrorist organizations, first and foremost Daesh and the PKK that act jointly against humanity’s common values.”

Turkish officials say Erdogan raised his objections to U.S. backing of the Kurdish-dominated SDF in a phone conversation last week with president-elect Donald Trump. Trump has said he wants to improve relations with Ankara but he has also indicated frequently he sees the defeat of IS as the top priority when it comes to Syria and Iraq.

By: Jamie Dettmer

balance of natureDonate

Latest article

- Advertisement -