Trump’s false claim of ‘centuries’ of fighting between Turks and Kurds

“If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting. And the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years — that whole mess. It’s been going along for a long time. Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.”

— President Trump, remarks at the White House, Oct. 16

“We helped the Kurds. They’re no angels, but we helped the Kurds. And we never gave the Kurds a commitment that we’d stay for the next 400 years and protect them. They’ve been fighting with the Turks for 300 years, that people know of.”

— Trump, remarks at a Cabinet meeting, Oct. 21

“Turkey, Syria and all forms of the Kurds have been fighting for centuries.”

— Trump, remarks at the White House, Oct. 23

“We don’t want to be involved in the border. The border between Turkey and Syria — they’ve been fighting for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting for centuries.”

— Trump, interview on Sinclair media, Oct. 25

“They’re fighting for 1,000 years, they’re fighting for centuries. I want to bring our soldiers back home.”

— Trump, remarks on announcing the death of the Islamic State’s leader, Oct. 27

When President Trump decided to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria on Oct. 6, he triggered a chaotic shift in regional dynamics and left Kurdish forces in Syria scrambling for a new ally. Until that day, U.S. forces had worked with Syrian Kurds to territorially defeat the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS.

In the aftermath of that decision, Trump repeatedly has attempted to frame Kurdish history as an unresolvable conflict going back hundreds of years, “centuries,” or even 1,000 years.

View the complete November 4 article by Atthar Mirza on The Washington Post website here.