Author Topic: Turkey's Gambit On Syria Pays Off As Washington Discusses 'Peace Corridor'  (Read 287 times)

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Turkey's Gambit On Syria Pays Off As Washington Discusses 'Peace Corridor' - Tsarizm
by Seth Frantzman

August 7, 2019August 7, 20190113   
Turkey’s Syria gambit show US responds to threats and strength

For several days Turkey did what it has done before — it threatened to launch a military operation against partners of the US-led coalition in Syria. Turkey deployed military forces and boasted that it would soon launch a military attack.  It claimed to have told Moscow, where it has recently purchased the S-400 missile system, about its plans, and to have told the Americans.

This sent the US scrambling to find a way out of the crises, a crises fueled by Turkey’s own timeline where Ankara dictates to Washington when the next mini-crises will erupt. In the fall of 2018 Ankara had done the same thing, threatening to attack eastern Syria, mobilizing Syrian rebel groups, and clashing with border posts of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main US partner in eastern Syria. Washington responded and US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from Syria in December 2018.

Just like the US ostensibly decided to fold up three years of a successful war against ISIS in Syria and leave, Defense officials were shocked at the sudden decision by the White House. The anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk and Defense Secretary James Mattis left abruptly because of the change. Turkey was dictating to Washington what to do in Syria. It said it would manage the rest of the anti-ISIS war after defeating the SDF, which it says it linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Syrian rebel groups, some of the religious extremists who hold anti-Kurdish views, were caught on video talking about invading eastern Syria. Others discussed re-settling millions of Syrian refugees, mostly Sunni Arabs who have fled other areas bombarded by the Assad regime, in the mostly Kurdish areas of eastern Syria.

Read more at: https://tsarizm.com/analysis/2019/08/07/turkeys-gambit-on-syria-pays-off-as-washington-discusses-peace-corridor/