Tabnak – As the US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria have intensified their efforts to retake ISIS-held areas inside the country, Turkey’s concerns are growing over Kurdish activism near its borders. Contradictory US positions about arming the Kurds has further complicated the situation.
According to the Associated Press, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Tuesday that America will continue to provide weapons to Syrian Kurdish fighters after the battle to oust Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, is over.
Describing American reassurances to Turkey that the US will take back weapons given to the Syrian Kurds after the ISIS fight, Mattis said it depends on when or where the next mission is. And he also sounded a cautionary tone when asked if all the weapons would be returned. "We’ll do what we can,” he told reporters traveling with him to Germany.
This is while, Turkey, a NATO ally, had claimed that US secretary of defense promised that Washington would take back armaments provided to the Syrian Kurdish forces once ISIS was defeated.
Ankara has accused the Kurdish YPG fighters — a favored US combat ally in the region — of supplying assistance and weaponry to the Kurdish PKK, an outlawed political faction in the southwest of Turkey that has long sought independence from Ankara, according to Reuters.
In his latest remarks, Mattis said the US has made it clear that, "we’re going to equip them for the fight. If they have another fight and they need, you know, the light trucks that they’ve been using … we’ll get them that.” It depends, he said, on the battle and what weapons the Kurdish fighters need.
This is while, armed tensions between Ankara and the Syrian Kurdish forces have been in the rise recently. In a latest incident, the Turkish military declared on Wednesday that Turkish forces retaliated with artillery fire overnight and destroyed Kurdish YPG militia targets after YPG fighters opened fire on Turkey-backed forces in northern Syria.
The Turkish army said that YPG machine-gun fire on Tuesday evening targeted Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) elements in the Maranaz area south of the town of Azaz in northern Syria.
"Fire support vehicles in the region were used to retaliate in kind against the harassing fire and the identified targets were destroyed/neutralized," the military statement said.
Middle East Eye notes that faced with turmoil across its southern border, Turkey last year sent troops into Syria to support FSA forces fighting both ISIS and Kurdish forces who control a large part of Syria's northern border region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey would not flinch from taking tougher action against the YPG in Syria if Ankara believed it needed to.
At the same time pro-Erdogan Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah writes that "inconsistent statements from the US on retrieving the weapons it is providing the YPG after operations end shows that the Obama administration's policies still dominate Washington, which could further strain US-Turkish ties.”
Citing "experts”, the newspaper goes on to say that the latest statements from the US clearly show that Washington will continue to assist its "friends" in Raqqa. It warns Washington that "the continuation of this friendship is a threat to Turkey's security as it will lead to cooperation between the PKK terrorist organization and the US in northern Syria. Ultimately, Turkey would intervene in such a situation and it is now only a matter of time until that happens.”
All in all, the situation regarding the Kurdish fighters in Syria has become so sensitive that regardless of the other developments on the ground in the war-torn country, it could create a new, even more complicated crisis by its own. How the US will manage its future moves regarding the issue and how Turkey will react, could have serious repercussions for the whole region.
