US, France May Have Reached Responsibilities Transfer Deal in Syria – Academic
- US, France May Have Reached Responsibilities Transfer Deal in Syria – Academic
by https://sputniknews.com/
President Trump has said that the US would leave Syria “like, very soon,” seeming to catch his own officials from the Pentagon and State Department off guard. Ilter Turan, professor of international relations at Turkey’s Istanbul Bilgi University, spoke to Sputnik about the implications of Trump’s remarks, and of his recent political appointments.
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At a rally in Ohio on Thursday, Trump boasted that the US was “knocking the hell out of ISIS*,” and repeated several times that US forces would be “coming out” of Syria “very soon” and letting “other people take care of it.” An estimated 2,000 US troops are currently stationed in the country, operating alongside the majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces in the country’s north and east. Meanwhile, French media reportedThursday that the country’s troops will be sent to the Syrian city of Manbij to assist Kurdish militants against Turkey’s ongoing Operation Olive Branch offensive.
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Speaking to Radio Sputnik, Dr. Turan said that Trump’s remarks must be taken with a grain of salt.
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Sputnik: This is not the first time the US has promised to remove its forces from Syria. Do you think it’s likely that they will actually leave?
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Ilter Turan: Under normal circumstances, what an American president says would be taken seriously. Except there are already indications that this was not a carefully prepared remark. It seems that Mr. Trump said this without a carefully planned exit [strategy] from Syria.
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Even when carefully prepared statements were made by Mr. Obama with regards to getting out of Iraq, we should remember that he actually failed to get his forces out of Iraq. So I think Mr. Trump’s comment may be well-intended, but it does not allow us to immediately judge that the United States will be leaving Syria very soon.
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