WASHINGTON—Turkey is asking the U.S. to provide substantial military support, including air strikes, transport and logistics, so that Turkish forces can assume the main responsibility for fighting the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, senior U.S. officials say.
The Turkish requests are so extensive that, if fully met, the American military might be deepening its involvement in Syria instead of reducing it before leaving, the officials added.
Discussions on how the Turks might take over the Syria mission will take place in talks in the Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday involving White House National Security Adviser John Bolton; Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and James Jeffrey, the State Department envoy for Syria.
President Trump said last month that he had reached an agreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the Turkish military to replace the more than 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria within weeks. Mr. Trump later indicated he was slowing the American troop withdrawal following widespread criticism over the risks to the abruptly announced plan.
The plan for U.S. troops in Syria to be replaced by Turkish forces, which remains on track, was codified in a classified memo Mr. Bolton recently sent to cabinet-level officials, U.S. officials said.
Mr. Bolton also wrote in the memo that the administration’s prior policy objectives in Syria were not being changed. Those goals have included defeating Islamic State, evicting Iranian-commanded forces and pursuing a diplomatic end to the civil war.
Proponents of Mr. Trump’s decision to hand over to Turkey assert that this shows the administration’s basic strategy is intact.
But skeptics within the government say there is a wide gap between the White House’s goals and the means that will be available to carry it out.
Mr. Trump embraced Mr. Erdogan’s offer to take on the mission against Islamic State in a Dec. 14 phone call in a decision that surprised both former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting Islamic State, people familiar with their thinking said. Both subsequently resigned their posts.
Three U.S. military officials said there was a widespread view that the Turks couldn't replicate the role that the American military has played in Syria against Islamic State, noting that the Turks faced an array of logistical and political challenges. That assessment also is shared by a number of intelligence analysts, a U.S. official said.
“I haven’t heard anyone say they think the Turks can do it,” one of the military officials said.
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The officials said they didn’t believe the Turks could logistically move their forces deep into Syria’s Middle Euphrates River Valley to battle Islamic State’s remnants and provide the supplies they needed. The officials also questioned Turkey’s ability to carry out a substantial air campaign against the terror group, which has been a key part of the U.S.-led coalition campaign.
There also are widespread fears that the Turks will target the Kurds, a longtime on-the-ground partner for the U.S. in the anti-Islamic State campaign.
To try to mitigate these risks, Mr. Jeffrey, the State Department envoy, is seeking to work out an arrangement with the Turks that would allow them to go into northern Syria while avoiding largely Kurdish areas, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plans. Mr. Jeffrey has also asked Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish commander of Syrian fighters with whom the U.S. has been working, to hold off on making any deals with President Bashar al-Assad’s government while the Trump administration tries to develop its strategy.
Mr. Jeffrey will take over Mr. McGurk’s responsibilities as the top U.S. representative to the coalition fighting Islamic State while retaining his duties as the senior envoy on Syria policy, several U.S. officials said.
One U.S. official said that administration was unlikely to provide all of the military support, including air cover, that the Turks are seeking. “We are certainly not planning to support them at that level" of air support, a U.S. official said.
Emre Ozkan, a counselor at the Turkish embassy in Washington, said he had no information to offer on military planning by his government and the U.S. A spokesman for Gen. Dunford said: “We have nothing to provide.”
Despite President Trump’s assertion on Dec. 19 that the U.S.-led coalition had defeated Islamic State, strikes against the terror group have since increased. From Dec. 16-29, there were 469 coalition strikes against the group in Syria, according to the coalition. Among the targets were command and control nodes, explosive facilities, weapons caches and one “unarmed aircraft system,” the U.S. military said in a statement. Between Dec. 9-15, the coalition said it conducted 208 strikes in Syria.
The U.S. also is considering moving ships toward the region in case troops come under attack while leaving the country. Withdrawing from a war zone is a particularly vulnerable time for troops as they move large amounts of people and equipment out of the country. An amphibious assault ship, for example, carries helicopters, aircraft and hundreds of troops and could mitigate that risk, a defense official said.
Mr. Erdogan offered to take on the fight against Islamic State during the Obama administration, but U.S. officials believed then that Turkey was promising more they could deliver and noted that the Turks were assuming they would also have support from the U.S. military.
“Pentagon officials were very skeptical of the Turks’ ability to deliver on the ground in the fight against” Islamic State, a former Obama administration official said.
—Vivian Salama in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com
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