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Trump says will ‘obliterate’ Turkey’s economy if it goes ‘off limits’ in Syria
Trump’s extraordinary warning by Twitter against NATO ally Turkey came just after the White House announced a US military drawdown in Turkish-Syrian border areas.
President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to endorse an impending Turkey military operation against US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces in Syria saying it was time for the United States to “get out of ridiculous endless wars” many of whom are “tribal”.
In a major shift in US policy towards Syria, the White House on Monday had said Turkey will soon be carrying out its “long-planned operation” in Northern Syria and the US will not participate in the operation, with or against, and that American troops will leave the area. The statement came after Trump spoke with Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan.
The US has 1,000 troops in Northern Syria, of whom 100 to 150 who are in the Syria-Turkey border areas that will be hit by Turkish invasion, were already being removed ahead of the fighting, according to reports citing witnesses.
Trump also threatened Turkey, to stave off criticism possibly — including from key Republican allies — for abandoning the allied Syrian Kurds, he will “totally destroy and obliterate” its economy if it “does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits”. No details were available of these “limits”.
In Ankara, US military leaders delivered similar message to their counterparts. Defense secretary Mark Esper and joint chiefs chairman Mark Milley told Turkish officials “unilateral action creates risks for Turkey”, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.
But he defended his decision as well arguing the US had gone into Syria for “30 days, that was many years ago”, and had stayed and went “deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight”. It’s time, he added, “for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home”. The president had campaigned as a candidate for ending ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-Syria region, and has appeared keen to have something to show when he goes back to the electorate for a second term next November.
Trump went on to justify the decision to abandon the Kurds, who had fought alongside American troops to end the Islamic State “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, arguing, in a message that would resonate among a long list of forsaken US allies, they “were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so”.
The American president said he had “held off this fight” — between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, who are considered a terrorist insurgency by Ankara — for three years but it was time to move on.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, as the Syrian Kurdish forces are called, have vowed to defend themselves. And Spokesman Mustafa Bali said in a tweet, “”We will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to DEFEND ourselves and our people.”
The Kurds will see the US announcement as a betrayal as they bore the brunt of fight against the Islamic States whose defeat is touted by the American president as one of his major foreign policy achievement, and criticism of his decision to abandon them now was loud and lacerating at home in the US.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator known as the trump whisperer, called the pullout decision a “disaster in the making”.
Nikki Haley, former US envoy to the UN, said on Twitter. “We must always have the backs of our allies, if we expect them to have our back. The Kurds were instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria. Leaving them to die is a big mistake.”
Trump is sticking to his decision for now, but he was forced to reverse his decision to pull out all troops from Syria last December in the face of opposition from the Pentagon — reinforced by the resignation of then defense secretary James Mattis — and others.
