Turkey has threatened to step up military action against Syrian Kurdish fighters allied with the United States in response to the Trump administrations decision to directly arm the Kurds for an assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa, Turkish officials said.
The warning was delivered to senior U.S. national security officials in closed-door meetings this week after the Trump administration expressed its intent to arm the Kurds following months of deliberations, the Turkish officials said.
Turkeys message to the Trump administration was that Turkey reserves the right to take military action, said a senior Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Turkey has already conducted limited strikes against the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria in recent weeks, but it could increase the tempo of those strikes, Turkish officials said. American officials have complained bitterly to Turkey, a NATO ally, about the airstrikes, which have targeted the principal U.S. partner in Syria in the fight against the Islamic State.
Any further military action could also potentially complicate the offensive on Raqqa, the Islamic States symbolic capital and its last major stronghold after the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is besieged by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. U.S. officials are concerned that Turkey could send forces into northern Syria and draw the Kurdish fighters away from the Raqqa battle.
Turkish officials reacted with public anger to the U.S. move to arm the Kurds, a decision that was announced Tuesday, a week ahead of a state visit to Washington by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
urkey views the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, as an existential threat. The YPG, which dominates a U.S.-supported force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party. That organization, known as the PKK, has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is classified as a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.
