Baladi News
Days after handing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a diplomatic win by announcing he’ll pull U.S. troops out of Syria, President Donald Trump defended the move, saying Turkey “should be able to easily take care of whatever remains” of Islamic State, the Time magazine wrote on Saturday.
Trump’s action on Syria, which was announced on Twitter and triggered the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and a leading U.S. diplomat, came a week after the president was supposed to tell his Turkish counterpart to stop testing his patience with military threats in Syria, the magazine said.
Instead, during a lengthy phone call on Dec. 14, Trump shocked even those in his inner circle by yielding to a suggestion from Erdogan to reverse the Pentagon’s Syrian strategy.
Erdogan pressed Trump to explain why American forces were still in Syria even after they met their objective of defeating Islamic State, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation.
According to the magazine, while Trump faced political heat, Erdogan became a hero at home, seen as a leader who got his way with the world’s biggest superpower by convincing Washington to end its support for Turkey’s nemesis in Syria, the Kurdish militant group (YPG).