Turkey Criticizes US Arming of Kurdish Fighters
"We hope the US administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it."
The United States government recently announced its decision to give weapons to Kurdish fighters battling ISIS in Syria. Trump authorized shipments of arms to the Kurd fighters on Monday in order to fight in the self-declared ISIS Capital of Raqqa. But Turkey has disapproved of this strongly, announcing on Wednesday that, “cannot accept the presence of terrorist organizations that would threaten the future of the Turkish state.” Turkey’s argument that the Kurdish forces are terrorists themselves has been strongly voiced recently; they are strongly pushing for the United States to supply arms to groups they support instead (Al-Jazeera, 2017).
In an attempt to ease the nervous Turkish government, the Pentagon chief has vocally supported Turkey, claiming they’re committed to protecting the country. The US Military began patrolling towns of Northern Syria in April in order to buffer Turkish and Kurdish units (Sputnik News, 2017). This commitment isn’t seen as enough by Turkey, who is nervous that the many arms- possibly including 120 mm mortars, machine guns, and “lightly-armed vehicles” (BBC News, 2017)- could be used against Turkey instead of for fighting ISIS.
“We hope the US administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it,” said the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey (Al-Jazeera, 2017). Turkey is a NATO ally of the USA.
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