Syria Live Updates: As Turkey Invades, al-Assad Sees Chance to Reclaim Lost Territory

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-kurds.html

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President Trump said Monday that he was halting trade negotiations with Turkey and doubling tariffs on imports of Turkish steel as relations between the countries continued to deteriorate.

Mr. Trump said that he was increasing steel tariffs on Turkey to 50 percent from 25 percent, and warned that additional economic sanctions were coming.

The United States imposed a 50-percent steel tariff on Turkey last year amid a conflict over an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was detained in Turkey and accused of espionage. The tariff was later reduced to 25 percent.

Saudi Arabia has spoken out publicly for the first time about President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull American forces out of northern Syria, with one top diplomat calling the results “a disaster for the region.”

That was the response Monday from the kingdom’s newly arrived ambassador to London, Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Sultan.

The decision “does not give one incredible confidence,” the ambassador said when asked whether the pullout had altered the kingdom’s assessment of Mr. Trump’s reliability as an ally. “We are concerned, no question,” he said.

Prince Khalid, speaking in a public discussion with the BBC newscaster Frank Gardner at the Royal United Services Institute, addressed the Syria withdrawal and the upheaval that followed with unusual candor for a diplomat from the kingdom. Official public communications there are usually highly formal and tightly restricted, and Saudi Arabia had studiously avoided criticizing the United States’ Syria policy.

“The last thing we need in the region is another front of chaos, and I think we just got it,” he said.

At the same time, Prince Khalid noted that Mr. Trump had also agreed this week to send some American troops and missile batteries to Saudi Arabia, in order to help “manage the northern defenses.” Those moves came in the aftermath of a crippling attack on the kingdom’s most important oil installation, carried out last month by a barrage of low-flying cruise missiles or drones.

Now the Saudis are trying to square the American decision to send it support with Mr. Trump’s decision to pull out of northern Syria.

“Luckily, I am not the ambassador to Washington,” the ambassador joked.

In a conversation after the talk, Prince Khaled also said that Mr. Trump’s pullout of Syria had increased the influence in the region of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, a main sponsor of the Syrian government.

“Russia is becoming an important player in the region — whether one likes it or not, it is a fact,” Prince Khalid said.

“The Russians,” he said, “do to a certain extent understand the East better than the West does.”

The return of government forces to northeastern Syria not only deals a blow to Kurdish-led forces who were supported by the United States, but also signals a major shift in Syria’s eight-year war.

The Syrian Army entered the town of Tel Tamer in northeastern Syria, the state news media reported on Monday, soon after the government of President Bashar al-Assad forged an alliance with the Kurdish forces that control the region.

The Syrian government had been almost entirely absent from the northeast since it withdrew or was chased out by armed rebels in the early years of Syria’s civil war. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia that worked with the United States to fight the Islamic State, soon became the region’s overarching political force.

Although the Syrian Kurds did not declare Mr. al-Assad’s government an enemy, the Syrian president looked askance at their goal of self-rule and vowed to retake all his country’s territory. He had no way to do so, however, especially with American troops remaining in the area.

President Trump’s decision last week to move those troops out of the way of a Turkish incursion gave Mr. al-Assad an opening, and his forces began to fill it on Monday. Trucks drove large numbers of Syrian soldiers into the area to take up positions.

In some towns, they were welcomed by residents who chanted nationalistic slogans and carried Mr. al-Assad’s photograph.

Tel Tamer is a strategic crossroads that connects northeastern Syria with the country’s northern hub, Aleppo, and is 20 miles from Ras al Ain, the center of the Turkish assault.

If Syrian government forces can reach the Turkish border to the north and the Iraqi border to the east, it would be a major breakthrough in Mr. al-Assad’s quest to re-establish his control over the whole country.

Syrian government forces also entered the town of Ain Issa on Monday, a day after it was briefly overrun by Turkish-led troops. Around 500 ISIS sympathizers took advantage of the mayhem and escaped detention, local officials said.

A Kurdish official, Aldar Xelil, said in a statement on Monday afternoon that Syrian government forces are to stay away from a section of the Turkish border currently being contested by Turkish-led forces and the Kurdish militia that controlled the area until last week.

Mr. Xelil said the Kurds would fight alone on that part of the border, where the Turkish forces have already established a strong presence. He also said the Kurdish authorities would remain in charge of administering and policing of the region. Syrian officials have not confirmed the details of the plan Mr. Xelil described.

Foreign ministers from all 28 European Union member states agreed unanimously on Monday to stop selling arms to Turkey, the first time the bloc has reached such a decision about a NATO ally.

The European Union chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, who is nearing the end of her tenure, said that the military action by Turkey in Syria raised concerns in Europe about a resurgence of ISIS, and that this was a key motivation for the decision.

President Trump has criticized European countries for not repatriating their citizens who went to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Ms. Mogherini said the issue was not discussed at Monday’s foreign minister meeting.

In a joint statement from the foreign ministers, the bloc condemned Turkey’s incursion into northeastern Syria, agreeing on strong wording despite initial concerns from Britain.

“The E.U. condemns Turkey’s military action, which seriously undermines the stability and the security of the whole region, resulting in more civilians suffering and further displacement and severely hindering access to humanitarian assistance,” the ministers said.

The decision is expected to be most significant for Germany, a major source of weapons for Turkey. Britain, France and Italy also sell arms to Turkey.

With the Syrian Kurds forced to turn to Mr. al-Assad and his key backer, Russia, for help in fending off Turkey’s advance, the retreat of United States troops from northeastern Syria appears to be a boon to Moscow’s interests in the Middle East.

On Russian state television’s prime weekly news show on Sunday night, the anchor Dmitri Kiselyov trumpeted the pullback of troops as the latest evidence that Americans are not to be trusted.

“The Kurds themselves again picked the wrong patron,” Mr. Kiselyov said. “The United States, of course, is an unreliable partner.”

But the Kremlin on Monday played down the possibility of a clash between Russian and Turkish forces as analysts cautioned that Moscow’s expanding influence in Syria was tempered by new risks.

The departure of American troops has also created new tests for a Russian military that critics already say is overextended, forcing it to confront a resurgent threat from the Islamic State and the danger of a clash with Turkey.

“We wouldn’t even want to think about such a scenario,” a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Monday, answering a reporter’s question about the possibility of conflict between Russian and Turkish forces. “There are communication links between the militaries” for avoiding such a collision, he added.

Last week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia warned that thousands of detained Islamic State fighters who are originally from Russia and other former Soviet republics may flee as a result of Turkey’s advance, presenting a serious security risk.

Fyodor Lukyanov, a Russian foreign policy analyst close to the Kremlin, said that “Russia’s goal is for more and more territory to come under Assad’s control in one form or another, and the current developments facilitate this.” But, he cautioned, “this is all very dangerous, because this is an extremely fragile situation.”

Underscoring Russia’s growing sway in the Middle East, Mr. Putin landed in Riyadh on Monday for a state visit to Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most powerful Arab ally. Mr. Putin planned to discuss regional security, oil prices and business deals in meetings with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kremlin said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said on Monday that his troops would continue to support an invasion of parts of northern Syria, despite the return of Syrian government forces.

The official Turkish explanation for the offensive was to clear the area of the Kurdish-led militia that has close ties with a terrorist group that is banned in Turkey.

At the start of the invasion, Turkish officials said they respected Syrian sovereignty.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Erdogan said a Turkish-backed force would press on with attempts to capture Manbij, a town at the crossroads of two major highways that the Kurdish authorities in northern Syria have handed over to the Syrian government. He then criticized NATO allies for not aiding in Turkey’s fight.

“There is a struggle against terrorists — are you going to stand by your ally, a NATO member, or the terrorists?” he asked.

The invasion of Manbij would be led on the ground by Syrian Arab militias, but would have Turkish backing, Mr. Erdogan said. The Turkish president appeared to be more ambivalent about Kobani, a Kurdish-run city on the Syrian border that Mr. Erdogan had previously threatened to capture. It was the scene of a fierce battle between Kurdish fighters and ISIS extremists in 2014 and 2015 that ended in an ISIS retreat.

Mr. Erdogan implied on Monday that an agreement about Kobani had been reached with the Russian government, Syria’s main international backer, though his meaning was unclear.

“In Kobani with Russia’s positive approach, it seems like there won’t be a problem,” Mr. Erdogan said, without elaborating.

A local journalist said by phone that American troops had been deployed to a strategically-located bridge south of Kobani over the Euphrates River, making it harder for Syrian government troops to reach the area and the United States military base in its vicinity.

The Kurdish authorities handed over control of Kobani to the Syrian government overnight, in a bid to stop Turkish-led forces from making further gains.

“The Americans are still on the bridge,” said Ahmad Mohammad, a Kurdish journalist from the area. The Rojava Information Center, an activist-led information group, also reported that at least three American vehicles were deployed on the bridge on Monday.

The United States military had said it would withdraw from the area but needs time to carry out a retreat.

Tensions between France and Turkey over the invasion of Syria have spilled over into sports.

The two countries met on the soccer field near Paris on Monday night, but only after some French politicians called for the game to be canceled.

It wasn’t, but France’s Foreign Ministry said that Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, would no longer be attending.

The French authorities announced heightened security at the game, which was being played at the Stade de France near Paris. Over 75,000 spectators were expected, including nearly 4,000 Turkish fans, and many more from France’s Turkish community.

In arguing for the game to be canceled, some French politicians noted that the Turkish national team made a military salute during a game against Albania last week.

“If Turkish soccer players do military salutes, they should expect to be treated like soldiers from an enemy army,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of the far-left France Unbowed party, said on Twitter.

Mr. Mélenchon said that France should not play against Turkey because “the basis of the sporting spirit is no longer there.”

Jean-Christophe Lagarde, the head of the centrist UDI party, said the Turkish team had “breached the border that separates sports from politics.”

“Tomorrow at the Stade de France, we cannot decently welcome those who are saluting the massacre of our Kurdish allies,” Mr. Lagarde said in a Twitter post on Sunday.

Turkish troops shelled within 550 yards of an American observation post in northern Syria late Friday while United States troops were in the area, according to a military situation report obtained by The New York Times.

Since 2016, the United States has maintained several camps in northern Syria, including a post near the town of Kobani, as part of an international alliance fighting the Islamic State.

The military report undermines both American and Turkish narratives about the shelling, which was first reported on Friday by Newsweek. In American news reports over the weekend, unidentified officials variously claimed that the Turkish shelling was probably deliberate, that it was intense and that it had hit areas on both sides of the American post. In an official statement, the Pentagon said only that Turkish forces had shelled within a few hundred meters of American troops.

In response, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said that the strike was an accident and that its forces had fired on Kurdish troops around 1,000 yards from the American outpost. But the military situation report contests both the anonymous American briefings and the Turkish account.

A map shows two Turkish artillery strikes two miles west of the American outpost and one strike landing roughly 300 to 500 yards southwest of the post, closer than the Turks acknowledged, but less intense than some United States officials have claimed.

The military report said that the shelling near the American post was probably an accident, and added that further misfires by Turkish forces could not be ruled out.

The United States had no greater ally in driving out the Islamic State militants who claimed vast swathes of Syria in the quest for a modern-day caliphate than the coalition of fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Inch by inch, the Kurdish-led militia, working with its American military partners, drove ISIS militants out of their strongholds.

But another United States ally viewed the militia much less fondly: Turkey. Its leaders looked across their southern border and saw not an ally but a threat to its territorial integrity, given the militia’s ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

With Turkish-led forces now threatening the Kurds, the S.D.F. has turned its attention away from the Islamic State, including those militants captured during the war and held in detention camps. Already, some ISIS members said to have escaped, along with hundreds of their family members. A planned transfer of five dozen “high-value” detainees to the United States from Syria never happened.

Between escaped ISIS members and the Islamist sleeper cells believed to have been left behind when the militants were defeated in Syria, there is concern that the world has not seen the last of the extremist group.

Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Ben Hubbard, Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Patrick Kingsley, Hwaida Saad, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Anna Momigliano, Anton Troianovski, Steven Erlanger, Aurelien Breeden, Karam Shoumali, Eric Nagourney, Russell Goldman and Megan Specia.