In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Mike Reynolds, an academician at Princeton University, said labeling Turkey’s objections to arming the YPG terror organization ‘anti-Kurdish’ is ignorant.
“TURKEY’S ACT IS A WANTON IMPULSE”
“To dismiss Ankara’s objections to America’s arming of the YPG as mere anti-Kurdish bigotry is ignorant, akin to labeling the fight against al Qaeda as Islamophobia,” they wrote.
Referring to critics of Trump’s decision to pull back US troops from northern Syria, they said they disregard reality. “Turkey’s determination to secure its southern border against the YPG is a wanton impulse, in the prevailing view. But the YPG has substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, as then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified before Congress in April 2016,” they said.
“ANKARA REALIZED THAT IT HAD LITTLE CHOICE”
The op-ed, titled “Turkey Has Legitimate Grievances Against the US,” listed Turkey’s three grievances: “First, America’s diffident Syria policy. Ankara followed Washington’s lead in backing the Syrian people’s attempt to overthrow the dictator Bashar Assad. But when Turkey shot down a Russian combat jet violating its airspace in 2015, President Obama treated the episode more as a bilateral spat between third parties than as a conflict between America’s key regional ally and a more powerful adversary of U.S. interests. Left on its own, Ankara realized it had little choice but to accommodate Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s steadfastness trumped Mr. Obama’s aloofness.”