RSS Feed
February 16th, 2018 
Awake Goy Rex Tillerson tried to reassure Ankara over US’s involvement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), much of which is comprised of Kurdish YPG, which is outlawed in Turkey as a terrorist organization.
“We take it seriously when our NATO ally says it has security concerns,” Tillerson said at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday. “We have always been clear with Turkey that the weapons provided to the Syrian Democratic Forces would be limited, mission specific, and provided on the incremental basis to achieve military objectives only.”
Both Tillerson and Cavusoglu that the countries have found themselves at “a crisis point,” and have agreed to address “critical issues” in the bilateral relations.
“We’ve decided, and President Erdogan decided last night, we needed to talk about how do we go forward? The relationship is too important,” Tillerson said.
He said that the “priority” was to address the situation around Manbij, which Turkey earlier threatened to target in its offensive in Syria. The city is controlled by Kurds and is used by the US military to support Kurdish operations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
As Turkey targeted Kurdish-controlled Afrin in its military operation, it also threatened to launch offensive in the city of Manbij. Ankara now demands Washington to give guarantees over the withdrawal of the Kurdish YPG forces, which could lead to Turkey and US joint deployment in the area.
“What is important is who will govern and provide security to these areas,” Cavusoglu said. “We will coordinate to restore stability in Manbij and other cities. We will start with Manbij. After YPG leaves there, we can take steps with the US based on trust.”
Source Article from https://www.rt.com/news/418978-us-turkey-tillerson-visit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
