Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to mend ties with Turkey by criticizing a terrorist group that the angry NATO ally claims has worked with the United States in Syria.
“We stand alongside Turkey in their fight to stop terrorism directed against its country and its people,” Tillerson said Thursday after meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara.
Condolences for terrorism would be an act of generic diplomacy, except that he condemned an organization of Kurdish terrorists in Turkey tied to one of the most effective local partners in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, also known as Daesh, in Syria. Turkey’s government makes no distinction between the Turkish Kurds, known as the PKK, and the Syrian Kurds who are aligned with the U.S.
“The PKK attacks in Turkey last year remind us of how close to home the threat of attack is for the Turkish people,” he said. “We extend our condolences for all those who have been lost, who have lost those with loved ones to PKK terror, and we mourn the more than 70 Turkish lives lost inside of Syria in the brave fight against Daesh.”
Tillerson’s rhetorical equation of ISIS and the PKK is an olive branch to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who goes one step further by dubbing the Syrian Kurds who fight alongside the U.S. — known as the YPG or PYD — a “side branch” of the PKK. “No one in the world will buy this naive attitude of [attacking] Daesh with another terror organization,” Erdogan said in January.
Erdogan, who has made a series statements about Western powers following a failed coup attempt and during the run-up to a constitutional referendum that could expand his powers, has accused the United States of supporting ISIS.
“They give support to terrorist groups including Daesh, YPG, PYD,” Erdogan said in December. “It’s very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos.”
That statement elicited a rare public rebuke from the State Department, which rejected the “ludicrous” claim as being “harmful to our relationship.”
But Tillerson adopted a less confrontational public posture Wednesday. “Turkey’s been a NATO ally since 1952, and we continue to exercise military cooperation in that alliance and in the global coalition to defeat Daesh,” he said. “Our discussions today reaffirmed that we will prevent the resurgence of Daesh in previously held territory and aggressively stop the emergence of new terrorist threats on the ground, as well as the recruitment of terrorists online.”
Still, he didn’t indicate that the U.S. has decided to stop working with the Syrian Kurds, although such a decision might be in the offing. “We’re exploring a number of options and alternatives and we had a good discussion around those and there’s additional, I think, consideration on both sides yet to come,” Tillerson said.
Some Senate Republicans want to sideline the Syrian Kurds in exchange for Turkey sending more troops into Syria to capture ISIS’ capital city of Raqqa.
