Turkeys use of force against Kurdish forces in Syria has not gone down well with the U.S., with Washington openly supporting the Kurdish YPG fighters, who have proved to be a vital ground force in the battle against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
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SDF-aligned militia said they were reinforcing Manbij but insisted none of the troops in the region or the extra fighters heading to the city were from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. A Kurdish spokesman said the rebels had reached the river but had not crossed it.
Turkish troops have pounded areas around Jarablus, despite the town being liberated from IS last week (Tuesday 23 August), a state of affairs the USA calls “unacceptable and a source of deep concern”.
Turkey sent tanks across the border to help Syrian opposition forces take the town of Jarablus from the Islamic State militants to halt the advance of Syrian Kurdish forces who are affiliated with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdish rebels.
He said all relevant parties had been forewarned of Turkey’s operation in Syria, including the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a bitter enemy of Ankara who had been informed by its ally Russian Federation.
Turkey claimed to have destroyed targets in northern Iraq, but there are so far not any casualty figures or any confirmations out of Iraq about what was hit.
That puts Ankara at odds with Washington and adds to tensions when Turkey’s government is still reeling from last month’s failed coup, which it says Washington was too slow to condemn.
The Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG), which dominates the SDF, says its forces have withdrawn, and that the Turkish action against the group was a “pretext” for occupying Syria.
The fighting now pits Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, against the Syrian Kurdish force – a US-backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS militants in Syria’s five-year-old civil war.
“They are doing that, yes”, he said.
The United States is now caught between the demands of two key allies.
Turkish-backed forces say they have seized a string of villages south of Jarablus in a region controlled by groups aligned to the USA – and Kurdish-backed SDF.
At the State Department, spokesman John Kirby said that, “These actions were not coordinated with the USA and we are not providing any support to them”. “We have a broad and active agenda”, he said.
Several attacks have taken place in Turkey in the past year and many of them have been blamed on the Islamic State group.
McGurk continued: “We want to make clear that we find these clashes – in areas where #ISIL [Isis] is not located – unacceptable and a source of deep concern”. “The SDF have proven to be a reliable and capable force, and our support for the SDF in its fight against ISIL is ongoing and will continue to do so”.
They’re fighting each other in northern Syria.
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The Turkish force that retook Jarabulus also includes a Syrian rebel force previously trained by the Pentagon to fight ISIS.
