Defense Secretary Mark Esper condemned Turkey’s invasion of Syria as “unwarranted” Thursday and said it jeopardized security gains the US-led coalition and Kurdish forces made in the five-year fight against ISIS.
“Turkey put us all in a very terrible situation,” Esper told a conference in Brussels before a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
He said there are multiple crises in the Middle East and Turkey’s “unwarranted incursion into Syria” to attack the Kurds risks sapping “resources” in the region.
“There are new threats on the horizon that we ignore at our own peril,” he added.
Esper also said Turkey is “heading in the wrong direction” by carving out a “safe zone” in northern Syria and agreeing to a deal with Russia to jointly patrol the territory.
Turkey’s NATO allies must now “work together to strengthen our partnership with them, and get them on the trend back to being the strong, reliable ally of the past,” Esper said.
President Trump, in an Oct. 6 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he would remove the US military after Erdogan said he intended to launch a military offensive against the Kurds. Trump came under withering bipartisan criticism for giving Erdogan the go-ahead, but Esper defended the president, saying Americans did not need to be put in harm’s way.
Meanwhile, Kurdish forces claimed Turkey launched a new offensive against them in three towns in northeast Syria, despite Trump saying Erdogan told him that the five-day cease-fire had been extended permanently.
“Our forces are still clashing,” the Kurds said in a statement, adding a plea to the US to intervene and stop the Turkish onslaught.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he would lift sanctions against Turkey because of Erdogan’s “permanent” cease-fire.
Kurds also accused Turkish-backed Syrian forces of stomping on the corpse of a female Kurdish fighter to desecrate it.
Turkey, which views the Kurdish militia as a terror group, has said it would react in self-defense against any fighters who remain in the territory.
Erdogan punctuated that sentiment in a speech on Thursday.
“If these terrorists don’t pull back and [they] continue their provocations, we will implement our plans for a [new] offensive there,” he said.
And Russia, which has been propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his civil war against rebels, began moving military police to the Turkish border under a deal Tuesday between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow also said it is deploying another 276 military police and 33 units of military hardware to Syria in a week, according to Russian media.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said the accord is continuing as planned.
Under the agreement, the Kurds must withdraw from a swath of northern Syria by next Tuesday, and Russian and Turkish forces patrol the territory where the US and Kurdish troops had fought ISIS since 2014.
With Post wires