RE: Re Trump.21 Dec 2018 20:57
Donald Trump was supposed to tell his Turkish counterpart to stop testing his patience with military threats in Syria. That is, if the American president stuck to the script.
Instead, during a lengthy phone call earlier this month, Trump shocked even those in his inner circle by yielding to a suggestion from Recep Tayyip Erdogan to reverse the Pentagon’s Syrian strategy, handing the Turkish president his biggest diplomatic victory ever...
But behind the scenes, there is a deep distrust in Ankara toward both Iran and Russia. One possibility Turkish officials fear is that the Syrian regime, backed by Russia and Iran, might collaborate with the Kurdish YPG after the U.S. pullout.
Erdogan “is well aware that there is a bigger piece at stake in Syria beyond fighting the Kurdish group YPG. For that, Turkey has to work together with the U.S. against Iran,” Ozerdem (a co-director of Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University in the UK) said (from a Bloomberg article).