U.S. efforts to destroy the Islamic State have never involved giving “heavy arms” to a local partner that a key NATO ally regards as a terrorist threat, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“We have never given heavy arms to the YPG, so there’s none to take back,” Tillerson told reporters Thursday in Lebanon.
The YPG is an acronym for a group of Syrian Kurds who functioned as the most effective local fighters in the effort to recover ISIS-held territory. U.S. officials under former President Barack Obama and President Trump regard them as an essential part of those operations, but Turkey sees them as a terrorist threat more dire than ISIS, given the YPG’s ties to a group of Turkish Kurds who have fought a separatist insurgency against the Turkish central government.
“There are so many aspects of the Turkey-U.S. relationship which are very important and very positive, and we intend to build on the areas that we do share common interests, common concerns,” Tillerson said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his team have taken a harsher line in recent days, warning of a potential fracture between the two allies over the relationship between the United States and the YPG.
“Ties with the U.S. are at a very critical point,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier this week. “We will either fix these relations or they will break completely.”
Turkey is Tillerson’s final stop on a Middle East trip that has focused on counterterrorism and the crisis in Syria. State Department officials have acknowledged that the meetings present “a tough target” the United States. “I would tell you our endpoint objectives are completely aligned; there’s no gap between them,” Tillerson said.
