Kurdish fighters under attack by Turkey have described President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria as a “stab in the back.”
Since bombing began on Oct. 9, Turkish military operations against the Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria, Washington’s staunchest and most effective allies in the war against the Islamic State, has killed at least 11 civilians and an unconfirmed number of Kurdish fighters, with estimates ranging from dozens to hundreds.
Kurdish fighters are key partners to the U.S. in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2017, they helped overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, battled al-Qaida and pushed the Islamic State out of northern Iraq and Syria.
With 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.
