During a Friday news conference in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that President Trump had promised repeatedly in talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the US would not provide any weapons to the Kurdish YPG.
Trump said initially he had “issued instructions” that weapons shouldn’t be given to the Kurdish YPG, and after Erdogan expressed concern that they were still doing so, Trump had told him again he had ‘given very clear instructions” to stop.
These assurances were never made public, and the US has been very public about arming the Kurds, albeit with assurances that they’d eventually take the weapons back when ISIS was defeated, something many were doubting at the time.
Turkey has been deeply critical of US support for the Kurds, and very public about their own intentions to eventually fight the Kurds over northern Syria. The fact that they’re fighting Kurds awash in US-provided arms is a major inconvenience, but despite Cavusoglu’s claims today, it almost certainly was not an unexpected one.
“albeit with assurances that they’d eventually take the weapons back when ISIS was defeated”.
I do not remember whether it was President Carter or Reagan or both who gave portable ground-to-air anti-aircraft rockets to the mujaheddin who were fighting the Soviets. After the Soviets had left Afghanistan the Pentagon had a terrible time collecting the surviving rockets. In fact many of these rockets were bought back!
I’m pretty sure that it was the Reagan CIA who decided to give them Stingers. And it’s reliability suspected that Felix Sater, most excellent FBI informant and CIA asset, was instrumental in buying back some of them. Overall I think that it’s much easier to give our terrorists weapons than to recover them after we turn on our former terrorists. But I’m just guessing.
Apparently they learnt because when they were giving out TOW missiles they only gave out four and the launcher you had to bring the used launcher back to get more!
Surely the Turks didn’t really believe Trump’s “promise.” Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t understand what giving his word really means. Expediency will win out every time over integrity and honesty.
They should have asked Trump if he knew what YPG was before taking his word that he wouldn’t arm them. He didn’t know the difference between a Qud and Kurd during his campaign.
So who was paying for the convoy of ‘supplies’ being trucked into Northern Syria in the dark yesterday?
Now that he’s given his word, nobody should mind them being bombed.