Former envoy names key irritant in US-Türkiye relations

The support of the United States for the PKK terrorist group and its Syrian offshoot, the YPG, in Syria prevails as a major irritant in Turkish-US relations.

The last US ambassador to serve in Syria, Robert Ford, says Washington does not understand Türkiye's security concerns in Syria's north, where the terrorist group holds swathes of land, Daily Sabah reports.

Ford says Washington considers the situation a "security problem” when it is actually a "political problem."

"I think Washington in general, and also many analysts in Washington, do not understand the extent of anger which American relations with the YPG causes generates in Türkiye,” Ford, who was the US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told Anadolu Agency (AA) in an interview. "They think it's just a trivial matter, and it's necessary because Daesh and the Turks should stop worrying about it. And it's a kind of an American ignoring a major Turkish concern,” he continued.

The US policy on Syria has been one of the most challenging issues between the two NATO allies. Türkiye has never accepted the US backing for the YPG because of its ties to the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist group by both Türkiye and the US, on the other hand, sees the YPG as a partner in the fight against Daesh in Syria and does not recognize it as a terrorist group.

The PKK has waged a campaign of terror against Türkiye for more than 35 years and has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people.

Asked about the US strategy for defeating Daesh in Syria, Ford, a veteran US diplomat who is currently a fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, said: "I think the mission is impossible. And the fact that they have been there four years after the capture of Baghuz and still there is a Daesh insurgency tells me the mission cannot be achieved ... They can stay in eastern Syria, but they cannot completely eliminate Daesh. It's just a reality.”

According to Ford, the Sunni Arabs in Syria’s Hassakeh and Deir el-Zour provinces could eliminate Daesh, but they do not have the "incentives” and "means” to do that. "Americans need to think about how to de-radicalize fighters instead of just imprisoning them in remote prison camps, which we know from experience doesn't work,” he stressed. On US support for the YPG to defeat Daesh, Ford said it had an "immediate short-term benefit” between 2015-2019. "Like now, in 2023, can the YPG stop recruitment of unhappy young people that join Daesh in places like Deir el-Zour or Hassakeh? They can’t. If anything, there's a lot of resentment among local Arab communities towards the YPG,” he said. "This is a question of empowering the local communities to do more,” he added.