Erdogan: Trump Is Right on Syria, Turkey Can Get the Job Done

Local Editor

In a piece to the New York Times, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote that US President Donald Trump made the right call to withdraw from Syria.

“The US withdrawal, however, must be planned carefully and performed in cooperation with the right partners to protect the interests of the US, the international community and the Syrian people. Turkey, which has NATO’s second largest standing army, is the only country with the power and commitment to perform that task.”

Erdogan said his American counterpart “made the right call” last month to withdraw some 2,000 US forces from Syria.

The withdrawal, Erdogan said, “must be planned carefully and performed in cooperation with the right partners to protect the interests of the United States, the international community and the Syrian people.”

“Turkey, which has NATO’s second largest standing army, is the only country with the power and commitment to perform that task,” Erdogan wrote.

The Turkish head of state further warned the international community against repeating the same mistakes Washington and its allies had made in Iraq.

Trump has said that the US is leaving Syria because the mission to defeat the Daesh terror group has been accomplished.

“The lesson of Iraq, where this terrorist group was born, is that premature declarations of victory and the reckless actions they tend to spur create more problems than they solve,” Erdogan wrote.

He went on to say, “The first step is to create a stabilization force featuring fighters from all parts of Syrian society. Only a diverse body can serve all Syrian citizens and bring law and order to various parts of the country.”

Erdogan's comments come amid an uncertainty surrounding the timeframe for the US exit. Trump administration officials have made it clear that the troop withdrawal from northeastern Syria would not happen quickly.

On Monday, Trump said the US “will be leaving [Syria] at a proper pace,” while continuing to fight Daesh terrorists “and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!”

A day earlier, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton added a new condition to the US withdrawal, saying Turkey must agree to protect US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units [YPG] militia in Syria, which is viewed by Ankara as a terrorist group.

Source: New York Times, Edited by website team