US Moves to Halt Turkey's Drift Toward Iran and Russia

Dion Nissenbaum

The Wall Street Journal

Biography
@DionNissenbaum
Dion.Nissenbaum@wsj.com

Feb. 21, 2018 3:12 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Five months ago, President Donald Trump hailed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a friend and said the two North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies had never been closer.

But Mr. Trump’s optimistic view masked a more complicated reality: Turkey quickly has become one of the Trump administration’s most vexing relationships. Relations between the two countries, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson conceded last week, are at a “crisis point.” And there appears to be no clear road map for the two countries to overcome their differences.

The Trump administration has embarked on a new campaign to try to repair ties and pull Turkey out of its deepening alliances with Russia and Iran. As part of that, senior U.S officials including Mr. Tillerson, National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have held intensive talks with Turkish leaders in recent days as they try to persuade Mr. Erdogan to step back from his warming relations with Moscow and Tehran.

“They are getting played by the Russians,” said a senior Trump administration official. “Turkey’s alignment with Russia and Iran runs counter to Turkish interests.”

The U.S. wants Turkey on its side as it steps up efforts to push Iran and its allies out of Syria. And it is worried that Russia is making progress in dividing NATO by selling advanced anti-missile defenses to Turkey.

Turkish officials declined to comment Wednesday, but the U.S. and Turkey agreed over the weekend to form new working groups on key issues to see if they can bridge their differences.

“We prefer to talk about such matters with our American counterparts directly,” said a Turkish official.

Mr. Erdogan spoke earlier this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the three are laying the groundwork for a meeting in Turkey later this spring to discuss the conflict in Syria.

But the U.S. official derided Moscow’s efforts to work with Tehran and Ankara on a Syria strategy without the U.S. as “Putin’s Potemkin Peace Plan,” suggesting that it is a plan devoid of substance.

As the Trump administration sees it, the main issue dividing the U.S. and Turkey is America’s support for Kurdish fighters in Syria. For its meetings with Turkey, the U.S. created a busy Venn diagram to highlight this point. U.S. officials are trying to find a way to address Turkey’s concerns, but have yet to find a way to balance what seem like irreconcilable differences.

U.S. officials are offering to set up joint military observation posts in Syria with Turkey to ensure that Kurdish fighters in northern Syria don’t attack neighboring Turkey. And they are looking for ways to dilute the power of the Kurdish fighters that the U.S. helped strengthen by providing them with money, weapons and direct support from elite U.S. forces.

But the Trump administration isn’t willing to meet Turkey’s public demand that it stop working with the Kurdish militant force known as the YPG that Turkey sees as terrorists.

The YPG led the successful campaign to push Islamic State out of its self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria, and the U.S. now is working to transform Kurdish fighters into a local security force in the northeastern part of the country, where they currently work alongside elite U.S. forces.

Turkish leaders view American support for the YPG as a betrayal, especially since U.S. promises to scale back support for the Kurdish fighters haven’t been fully met. The YPG serves as the backbone of an Arab-Kurdish militant coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The U.S. has repeatedly put the onus on Turkey to come up with alternatives, and now Washington is asking Ankara to identify Kurdish leaders in Syria it is willing to support.

“Turkey could play a very positive role in helping to transform the Kurds and shift Kurdish political groups away from the YPG,” the U.S. official said. “Who are the Kurdish leaders that are acceptable to the Turks?”

With the main fight against Islamic State winding down, the U.S. is looking for ways to dilute the power of the YPG and ensure that the fighters hand control of predominantly Arab areas over to local forces.

“We can’t just walk away from the SDF,” the U.S. official said. “There is a way out of this, especially in predominantly Arab areas.”

For now, the main focus is on finding a way to broker a deal to end the fighting in northwestern Syria, where Turkish forces are moving in on the Kurdish-held city of Afrin. Turkey repelled a move by Syrian regime forces to enter the city earlier this week as the battle threatened to draw the major state powers into deeper, direct conflict.

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