Tag: Syria

Trump’s Retreat

Trump’s actions in Syria mean Russia is in control – and it’s unclear what comes next.

President Donald Trump’s surprise withdrawal from Syria – ordered with no forewarning at a time when he faces ever-intensifying political pressure at home – represents a remarkable American retreat from a relatively stable situation it did not have to abandon. Whatever clout the U.S. may have earned in the region, and subsequent ability to create further stability that would benefit Americans, is now gone.

“The U.S. has blown it. Trump has successfully blown it to the benefit of all the others,” says Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council.

The question is what comes next.

Kurdish forces who fought alongside the U.S. against the Islamic State group served as an essential bulwark protecting the Washington’s goal of negotiating a peace that would secure its political interests in Syria’s future and in the wider region. But any sense of cooperation the Kurds felt with the U.S. is now dashed. And questions remain about whether the Trump administration can deliver on the terms of a dubious cease-fire agreement with Turkey that Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday in Ankara.

View the complete Paul D. Shinkman on The U.S. News and World Report website here.

Turkish foreign minister completely undermines Mike Pence’s ‘ceasefire’ spin on northeastern Syria

AlterNet logoWith President Donald Trump withdrawing U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and abandoning the United States’ Kurdish allies, Turkish forces are making an incursion into that area just as critics of the U.S. withdrawal predicted they would. A U.S. delegation including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday met for four hours with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday. At a press conference following the meeting Pence, claimed Turkey agreed to a “ceasefire” in northeastern Syria. But Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in a separate press conference made it clear that a “ceasefire” isn’t what the Turkish government and Erdoğan have in mind.

Speaking in Ankara, Turkey, Cavusoglu told reporters, “This is not a stopping of the operation. This is not a ceasefire because a ceasefire takes place between two legitimate parties.”

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”We agree on collecting YPG heavy weapons, destroying their positions, fortifications” – Turkey’s Foreign Minister Cavusoglu

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“Pause in Turkey’s operation in Syria is not a cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides” – Turkey’s Cavusoglu

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View the complete October 17 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Pence announces Turkey has agreed to temporary ceasefire in Syria

Axios logoVice President Mike Pence announced from Ankara on Thursday that Turkey has agreed to cease its military operation in northern Syria for 120 hours so that Kurdish forces can withdraw from the area.

The big picture: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously said that he would “never” agree to a ceasefire, after the U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria paved the way for Turkey to begin a military assault on U.S-allied Kurdish forces that they view as terrorists.

The breakthrough came after five hours of negotiations between Pence and Erdogan and followed the authorization of sanctions against Turkish officials earlier this week by President Trump.

View the complete October 17 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

Democratic senator gives blow-by-blow account of Trump’s meltdown on Pelosi: ‘Belligerent from the get-go’

AlterNet logoSen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) gave a detailed account of the emotional meltdown that President Donald Trump had with congressional Democrats at the White House on Wednesday.

Appearing on CNN Thursday morning, Menendez broke down how Trump started raging at Democrats from the second he entered the room.

“The meeting started off with the president walking in and slamming down his files on the table,” Menendez said. “It was belligerent from the get-go… you have the president of the United States, who is supposed to bring our country together, particularly in times of challenges, [calling] the Speaker a third-rate politician.”

View the complete October 17 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Turkey’s Erdogan ‘threw Trump’s Syria letter in bin’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan put US President Donald Trump’s letter “in the bin”, the BBC has been told.

In the letter dated 9 October, and sent after US troops were pulled out of Syria, Mr Trump told Mr Erdogan: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”

President Trump was urging Turkey not to launch a military offensive against Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria, but Mr Erdogan ignored this request.

US Vice President Mike Pence is now in Ankara to push for a ceasefire.

View the complete October 17 article on the BBC News website here.

Donald Trump’s bizarre, threatening letter to Erdoğan: ‘Don’t be a fool’

President vows to destroy Turkish economy if Syria invasion is not resolved humanely, but brash language and diplomatic missteps draw confusion

Donald Trump warned his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “don’t be a fool” and said history risked branding him a “devil” in an extraordinary letter sent the day Turkey launched its incursion into north-eastern Syria.

The letter, first obtained by a Fox Business reporter, was shorn of diplomatic niceties and began with an outright threat.

“Let’s work out a good deal!” Trump wrote in the letter dated 9 October, whose authenticity was confirmed to various news outlets by the White House.

View the complete October 17 article by Vivian Ho and agencies on The Guardian website here.

Erdogan says Turkey will ‘never declare a ceasefire’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed US calls for a ceasefire in northern Syria and said that he’s not worried about American-imposed sanctions, or the advancement of Russian-backed Syrian forces toward the Turkish border.

Speaking to journalists traveling on his presidential plane following a visit to Azerbaijan Tuesday, Erdogan said a ceasefire was off the table. “Declare a ceasefire, they say. We will never declare a ceasefire,” Erdogan said. “We do not sit at the table with terrorist organizations.”

Erdogan’s comments come as Russian-backed Syrian regime troops on Tuesday gained control of the town of Manbij and surrounding areas, until recently an active US military outpost.

View the complete October 16 article by Helen Regan and Taylor Barnes on the CNN website here.

Trump says Turkish offensive has ‘nothing to do with us’

The Hill logoPresident Trump said Wednesday that Turkey’s offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria has “has nothing to do with us,” defending his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the region amid criticism.

“It’s not our land,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

“If Turkey goes into Syria that’s between Turkey and Syria,” he added. “That’s not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like you to believe.”

View the complete October 16 article by Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Mike Pompeo’s laughable defense of Syria withdrawal inspires fierce backlash: ‘Building foreign mobster ties is not a coalition’

AlterNet logoAs President Donald Trump continues to face widespread criticism over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and abandon the United States’ Kurdish allies, others in his administration find themselves defending the withdrawal — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is being lambasted after posting a tweet that tried to put a positive spin on things.

The news coming out of northeastern Syria this week following the withdrawal is dismal. With an incursion of Turkish troops, the Kurdish forces who has been helping the U.S. are turning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of desperation — and there are reports of captured ISIS fighters escaping in the chaos.

On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department tweeted an interview in which Pompeo told Nashville’s WZTV-TV that the U.S. was “leading from the front” to “build out coalitions that can effectively deal with some of the most difficult challenges facing the world today.” And it wasn’t long before Twitter was full of angry responses to that tweet.

View the complete October 15 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

‘Essentially Hostages’: US Nuclear Weapons At Turkish Airbase

When President Donald Trump pulled American troops out of northern Syria, virtually giving Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to attack the region’s Kurds, he likely didn’t anticipate a key factor that might get caught in the crossfire: control of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Erdogan’s forces have been raining down terror on the Kurds, long considered to be key U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS, exactly the horrifying scenario that critics of Trump’s move predicted. Turkey even fired on an outpost of U.S. special operation forces. It’s a fraught scenario for the United States to find itself in, made all the more dangerous by the fact that Turkey, itself a NATO ally, is home to an estimated 50 American nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported:

And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.

Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.

View the complete October 14 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.