Rebel fighters working with Turkey forced U.S. special forces operators to withdraw from a Syrian town by heckling them, while Americans in a separate incident were reportedly fired upon.
The State Department refused to confirmed the incident, but condemned any “bombastic and pugilistic” Syrian rebels who might have accosted U.S. troops. The incident puts the spotlight once again on tensions between the United States and Turkey. The relationship is strained in part by the U.S. decision to support a group of Syrian Kurds that Turkey — a NATO ally — regards as a terrorist group that must be destroyed.
“We all should be focused on the common threat and the common enemy, and that’s Daesh,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, using an alternative name for ISIS, when asked for a response to news that members of the Free Syrian Army ‘fired upon’ US. troops and heckled them until they withdrew from a town on the border of Turkey and Syria.
“If it’s true, obviously, that kind of rhetoric is not acceptable as part of what should be a coalition designed to go after a common enemy, which is Daesh,” Kirby continued. “And we certainly wouldn’t condone that kind of bombastic and pugilistic rhetoric against, frankly, our forces or anyone else that is [engaged in] the fight against Daesh.”
U.S. special forces are supposed to be working with Turkey and the FSA to clear ISIS out of the the Turkish border region, but the Turks are taking the opportunity to attack Syrian Kurds in the area as well. That set the table for a tense encounter between special forces operators and Turkish-aligned militia.
“Christians and Americans have no place among us,” The Telegraph quotes one man as shouting in the video, which appeared Friday on social media. “They want to wage a crusader war to occupy Syria.”
The Turkish government regards the Syrian Kurds (YPG) as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a designated foreign terrorist group in a long-running war with the Turkish regime. President Obama’s administration, however, has decided to work with the Kurds because they are effective fighters against ISIS. That motivated the FSA’s outburst, according to the Middle East Institute.
“Heated tempers and YPG relations aside, this was a big mistake by FSA,” Middle East Institute senior fellow Charles Lister told the Telegraph. “But it does go to show the diplomacy now required to make it work.”
U.S. officials hoped that pairing special forces with the Turkish military would strengthen the relationship between the two NATO allies. Ultimately, a full repair will likely require abandoning Syrian Kurds after ISIS is destroyed.
“At the end of his process, we will likely not be committed permanent backers of the Syrian Kurds,” one lawmaker with access to U.S. intelligence information told the Washington Examiner.
