Friday 11th October, 2019
WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters/GNA) – The
Pentagon said on Friday that Ankara’s military incursion into northeastern
Syria was damaging U.S.-Turkey relations, adding that the United States was not
abandoning its Kurdish partners.
“We have not abandoned the Kurds, let me
be clear about that,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at
the Pentagon.
“Nobody green-lighted this operation by
Turkey, just the opposite. We pushed back very hard at all levels for the Turks
not to commence this operation,” Esper said.
Turkey stepped up its air and artillery
strikes on Kurdish militia in northeast Syria on Friday, escalating an
offensive that has drawn warnings of humanitarian catastrophe and turned
Republican lawmakers against U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Kurdish YPG is the main fighting element
of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which have acted as the principal allies
of the United States in a campaign that recaptured territory held by the
Islamic State group.
The SDF now holds most of the territory that
once made up Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria, and has been
keeping thousands of Islamic State fighters in jail and tens of thousands of
their family members in camps.
Esper said he had spoken with his Turkish
counterpart about the harm the Turkish incursion was having on relations
between the United States and Turkey, which are NATO allies.
During the same briefing, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said there were no signs that Turkey
was going to stop its offensive, though the Turkish ground incursion had been
limited for now. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Additional
reporting by Susan Heavey, Editing by Franklin Paul and Richard Chang)
GNA
