Turkish president questions US-Turkey NATO alliance, while Iran expands influence in eastern Syria;<\/p>\n
Erdogan (again) accuses US of acting with terrorists in Syria<\/p>\n
What kind of alliance is this? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has, for the second time this month, accused the United States of siding with terrorists in Syria. Reacting to a tweet by Col. Wayne Marotto, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led mission against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Erdogan said on Feb. 22, \u201cWhat kind of a NATO alliance is this? \u2026 They (the US) still act with terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marotto had simply tweeted that the US-led mission \u201chasn\u2019t changed\u201d and that the coalition \u201cworks, by, with & thru our partner force SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) to defeat Daesh (Islamic State)\u201d in Syria. Marotto\u2019s tweet hardly seemed like news. But it was a trigger for Erdogan.<\/p>\n
Background. Erdogan has vowed to expand military operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in Iraq and Syria after the group reportedly ordered the execution of 13 Turkish hostages on Feb. 13; the PKK claims the hostages were killed in airstrikes by the Turkish military on its base in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, on the Turkish border. The PKK, founded in 1984, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union. While the allies agree on that, they differ on exactly who the PKK are. Turkey considers the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG), extensions of the PKK. But the YPG makes up the core of the US-aligned SDF \u2014 and thus is the source of the increasingly sharp differences between Washington and Ankara.<\/p>\n
Last week, on Feb. 15, Erdogan warned the United States that \u201cif you want to continue our alliance globally and within NATO, then you must stop siding with terrorists,\u201d as Amberin Zaman reports.<\/p>\n
Does Erdogan have another side to choose, though? \u201cOne can no longer speak of a Turkish foreign policy as we knew it,\u201d writes Metin Gurcan. Erdogan\u2019s strategy of playing the United States and Russia off one another in crisis regions, especially in Syria, \u201chas come to an end as a result of more assertive moves by the United States, Russia and Europe and, most critically, the change of guard in Washington. The Joe Biden administration and the Kremlin are both signaling that time has come for Erdogan to choose his side,\u201d suggests Gurcan.<\/p>\n
Our take. Last week Erdogan said, \u201cWe believe that our common interests with America outweigh our disagreements by far.\u201d No doubt he wants better ties with the United States. There is some signaling on a workaround on Turkey\u2019s purchase of the S-400 Russian missile defense system, opposed by the United States, but no signs yet of a breakthrough, as Diego Cupola reports. An understanding on Syria is even harder to fathom, given the deep split on the Kurds. Semih Idiz calls it a \u201cdialogue of the deaf.\u201d Indeed, the leverage the United States has in Syria, besides sanctions, is its relationship with the very Kurdish groups Erdogan sees as terrorists and equal to Islamic State. Gone is the easy connection Erdogan had with former US President Donald Trump, who was willing to shelve human rights \u2014 and the fate of the Kurds \u2014 in the interests of a deal with Turkey. The United States can continue to try to reconcile the PYD\/YPG with those Kurdish groups backed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), with whom Erdogan has good relations. But don\u2019t expect miracles on this front, as Amberin Zaman reports here. The endgame will require more assertive US diplomacy, starting at the UN Security Council, with some tough talk and trade-offs, with Russia and Turkey in Syria, as we wrote here last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkish president questions US-Turkey NATO alliance, while Iran expands influence in eastern Syria; Erdogan (again) accuses US of acting with terrorists in Syria What kind of alliance is this? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has, for the second time this month, accused the United States of siding with terrorists in Syria. Reacting to a tweet …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[745,168,48,587],"class_list":["post-3084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-syria-kurds","tag-tension","tag-turkey","tag-usa"],"yoast_head":"\n