The US doesn’t intend to withdraw its troops from Syria’s Manbij despite Turkey’s warnings, US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel said Monday.
Pulling US forces from Manbij is “not something we are looking into”, Votel said as quoted by CNN broadcaster.
The US has around 2,000 military personnel in northern Syria supporting a number of militant groups, dominated by the YPG.
Earlier this month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Ankara couldn’t limit its precautionary measures against the YPG to Syria’s Afrin district and might move to Manbij, also in Aleppo province.
The foreign minister reportedly said that, contrary to US promises, the cities of Manbij and Raqqa were not governed by local councils after being liberated from the Daesh terrorist group, but rather came under the control of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The latter is considered by Turkey to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist organization in Turkey.
Following Cavusoglu’s statement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the Turkish Forces would completely clear the region of terrorists, beginning with the Syrian city of Manbij and throughout our entire border with Syria.
Prior to Erdogan’s speech, the Turkish Armed Forces launched an operation, called Olive Branch, against the Kurdish forces in Syria’s Afrin district. The Turkish government said it had informed Damascus and Moscow, its co-guarantor in the Syrian peace process, of its operation, and has taken into account the position of Tehran, the third guarantor state.
The operation was provoked, as Ankara explained, by the necessity for the country to protect its borders from a “terrorist army,” the new “Border Defense Forces,” comprising the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Kurdish YPG militias, trained by the US.
On the day the operation started, Pentagon representative Adrian Rankine-Galloway said that the US recognized Turkey’s concerns regarding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but called on all sides to avoid escalation and focus on countering terrorism.
Besides Turkey, the US also deployed its troops in Syria in 2014 without obtaining neither the UN nor the Syrian mandate. Damascus has numerous times called on both countries to withdraw their troops from the Syrian territory.
Imost recent call, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad dubbed such deployments “invasive,” adding that Damascus would regard such actions as “occupation.”