The Pentagon on Thursday played down an increasingly fractious divide between the United States and Turkey over the fate of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters under attack by Turkish forces in the north of Syria.
“We are not in a crisis,” said Dana White, chief Pentagon spokesperson at a briefing for reporters. “Turkey is an ally, and we are going to work with them, but this current issue, the offensive, is a distraction, and we have to focus as allies in the mission at hand and that’s defeating ISIS.”
The U.S. is not training or providing support for the specific Kurdish factions under assault from Turkey in the Afrin region of Syria, which is just across Turkey’s southwest border. But the concern at the Pentagon is that Kurdish fighters battling ISIS to the east will feel the need to leave the battle and return to Afrin or other western areas to protect their homes and families.
“If someone leaves the fight against ISIS and goes somewhere else, that’s one less person in the fight against ISIS,” said Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Pentagon’s joint staff.
“That’s a powerful concern for us, and we would seek to try to prevent that, first of all by assuring all parties that there is no reason to go back and fight in Afrin, and we will continue to work that with our partners on the ground in the Euphrates River Valley,” McKenzie said.
Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that Turkey has asked the U.S. to pull its troops out of their base of operations in Manbij, another border area that Turkey wishes to secure as part of its objective of establishing a buffer zone along its southern border.
Cavusoglu said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the request directly to President Trump in their phone call Wednesday.
A White House readout of the call made no mention of the request, and said only that Trump urged Turkey “to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the request was made, and said any movement of U.S. troops would be a “policy decision,” not a military one.
Turkey’s operations in the Afrin region “have the effect of inducing friction into the equation,” said McKenzie, “making it hard to focus on why we’re in Syria, which is the defeat of ISIS in the Euphrates River Valley.”
The Pentagon has not called on Turkey to withdraw its forces, but urged it to “deescalate, limit its military actions, and avoid civilian casualties,” and said it recognizes that Turkey faces an active insurgency with its borders.
“They have legitimate security concerns, so we’re going to continue to engage with them,” said White. “It’s very important for all parties to remember that the common threat is ISIS and we need all parties to focus on that mission.”
