Several days of Turkish threats to attack the US-backed Kurdish forces in the Afrin District of Syria have finally gotten a reaction from the US State Department, which says they think Turkey should remain focused on fighting ISIS.
Calls for Turkey to “focus on ISIS” have successfully kept them away from the Kurdish YPG for months, but with ISIS virtually defeated in Syria, Turkey likely believes they’ve already waited out that excuse.
Turkey had already given the US something of an out on this earlier in the week, suggesting they’d withhold the attack if the US abandoned its plan to create a new border force, and stop backing the YPG in general.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says he believes the US owes Turkey “an explanation,” and that they won’t be building a border force, though this assurance came with the same weasel words other officials offered earlier in the week, that the 30,000-strong force on the border is in some technical sense neither new nor an exclusively border-focused force.