Pentagon officials have issued new statements on Turkey’s attacks yesterday against Kurdish targets in both Iraq and Syria, saying that they had put US troops in danger by launching the surprise attacks with insufficient advanced notice.
The US was already not so keen on Turkey attacking their allies in the fighting against ISIS. Pentagon spokesmen now say they were given less than an hour’s notice that the Turkish attacks were coming, not giving them much time to react.
At the same time, officials have insisted that no US troops were present at the sites of the strikes, and there were no US casualties reported among the scores of people killed in the attacks. Turkey of course has made clear they intended to attack the Kurds for years, but the lack of specific notice may suggest they didn’t trust the US not to warn them.
Turkey’s attack has provoked a lot of criticism from around the world, with the Russian Foreign Ministry the latest to issue a statement expressing “serious concern” over the attacks, saying that attacking sovereign states was “unacceptable” and that attacks on the Kurds were not helpful to the ongoing war against ISIS.
This is now a war within a war.