The United States has been “a highly unreliable partner” to Ankara as a result of inconsistencies in Washington’s Syria policy as well as its approach to Turkey and “terrorist” groups, a senior Turkish official told Al Jazeera.
“The problems and misunderstandings between the US and Turkey are results of the confusion and cacophony between the actors at different levels of the US administration and institutions,” Yasin Aktay, who advises President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his AK Party, said on Monday in an interview.
Turkish and US officials have been trading barbs over Washington’s support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and what will happen to the areas held by them in the north of the country after the planned US troop withdrawal.
Erdogan said last week the US administration is “seriously mistaken” in cooperating with Syrian Kurdish fighters, while President Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to “economically devastate” Turkey if it carries out a military offensive against the militia.
Trump announced the withdrawal of some 2,000 US troops from Syria last month, shocking many politicians in Washington as well as Western allies and Syrian Kurdish fighters who fought against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) alongside American troops.