TALKS CONTINUE
Risk of conflict rises in Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey (TNS) — Turkey says it’s talking to the Americans. The U.S. says it’s talking to the Turks. Politicians and generals in the two countries are in almost constant communication, judging by their public comments.
There’s no indication that any of this talk has resolved the fundamental argument that’s threatening to bring NATO’s two biggest armies into direct conflict in northern Syria.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began an offensive there last month against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, he started in an area where American troops aren’t embedded with their allies.
But he said the operation will soon extend farther east, to the town of Manbij, where they are.
Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish militia as part of a terrorist group seeking to break off from Turkey.
Russia moved its soldiers in northern Syria out of the way of the advancing Turks. The U.S. is signaling it won’t do the same.
Withdrawing from Manbij is “not something we’re looking into,” Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, told CNN.
— Bloomberg News