By Kenneth R. Timmerman | New York Post
Critics blasted Trump for allowing Turkey to invade
Kurdish-ruled northern Syria, but Kurdish fighters are more realistic about US
military support.
The national media blasted President Trump’s withdrawal of 50 US military advisors from the Syrian
border with Turkey as a “sellout,” a “betrayal” and a “huge strategic blunder.”
Let’s be clear: None of them truly care about the Kurds.
Otherwise, they would have been sending correspondents and camera crews to
Rojava, as the Kurds call northern Syria, on a regular basis.
Let’s also be clear about the goals of Turkish president
Tayyip Recep Erdogan. While he attempted to stylize his military invasion of
Rojava as a counterterrorism operation, few international observers bought into
it. Why? Because there have been no terror attacks against Turkey from Syrian
territory since the Syrian Kurds established their self-governing entity in
2012. None.
Erdogan is not even remotely interested in fighting ISIS,
or in taking responsibility for the estimated 12,000 ISIS fighters currently in
Kurdish custody at the al-Hol refugee camp. What actually happens to those ISIS
prisoners, and the fate of Christian and Yazidi minorities, will be key
measures of the agreement hammered out by Vice President Mike Pence and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Erdogan on Thursday.
The humanitarian disaster that unfolded this past week
helped to paint Erdogan as notorious a mass murderer as Saddam Hussein. And it
was to Erdogan’s legacy that the president appealed in his private, and now
public, letter to the Turkish president as the crisis unfolded.
But let’s be clear about US goals, too. Our advisors were
not in northern Syria to defend a Kurdish government but to fight ISIS. The
fight to smash the ISIS caliphate is over, and we won.
No US administration has ever bought into Kurdish national
aspirations. Even the pro-Kurdish ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was
a long-time investor in Kurdish oil, warned Iraqi Kurds to cancel a planned
referendum on independence in September 2017.
When Kurdish Regional Government president Masoud Barzani
defied those warnings, Tillerson said the results “lacked legitimacy” and
warned there would be serious consequences. And the United States did nothing
when Baghdad sent troops to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk shortly after the vote,
then arrested the Kurdish governor-general and reclaimed control of the
northern oil fields. That was a huge strategic setback for the Iraqi Kurds.
I have met with Kurdish political and military leaders in
the region, including the PYD, the political arm of the Kurdish YPG militia.
And while they were thrilled to have US backing in the fight against ISIS, none
of them had any illusions about the US coming to their aid should Turkey
attack.
Did the president’s critics really believe he should have
considered those 50 US soldiers as a “tripwire” that would trigger a massive US
military invasion of Syria to fight against Turkey — our NATO ally?
The president has taken concrete, immediate steps to
shame and to punish Erdogan for his outrageous violation of the North Atlantic
charter, which calls on member states to “settle any international disputes in
which they may be involved by peaceful means … and to refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
The president on Monday unleashed new sanctions against
Turkish officials and government entities, imposed stiff tariffs on Turkish
steel exports to the United States and called off talks on a $100 billion trade
deal.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unveiled a criminal
complaint against Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank for allowing Iran to buy
billions worth of gold using frozen oil money, violating economic sanctions.
The complaint makes clear that senior government officials — possibly including
Erdogan himself — took enormous bribes in exchange for allowing the scheme to
continue.
Those sanctions — and the threat of more sanctions — paid
off and forced Erdogan to back down.
The Kurds are paying a heavy price in this battle — not
because of a US betrayal — but because they remain stateless and thus
powerless. By targeting Erdogan financially, legally and undermining his
legitimacy, President Trump has done more to help the Kurds than his critics
with their crocodile tears. And for now, he is winning.
