Turkey and the Kurds are on the brink of war — and the Pentagon is right in the middle of it

pulse

July 18, 2017 11:06 PM

The US has been supplying both sides with weapons, and Turkey appears to be turning more toward Russia.

Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) run across a street in Raqqa.

Turkey and the US-backed YPG forces — which have been helping the coalition fight ISIS in Syria — have been clashing off and on since at least April.

At the end of that month, the two sides exchanged rocket fire, which Turkey says killed 11 YPG fighters. In early July, Turkey deployed troops to the Kurdish-held border in northwest Syria, which the YPG commander called "a declaration of war."

YPG and Turkish-backed rebels — who the YPG call mercenaries — clashed in northwest Syria on Monday, Reuters reported. The YPG said it killed three Turkish-backed rebels and wounded four more.

Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist group and extension of the PKK, which has been trying to set up its own Kurdish state within Turkey for decades. And the US has placed itself right between the two sides.

Turkey is the third-largest purchaser of US weapons, and in early May, the US began supplying weapons to the YPG to help in the coalition's fight against ISIS.

The latter move has angered Turkey even more than the US's unwillingness to extradite

Stein added that "the US is partly to blame" for increased tensions between Turkey and YPG, but, he said, "all sides have blood on their hands in this thing."

he Pentagon is running its own show," and the US State Department doesn't appear to be checking its decisions.

"We are concerned [about increased tensions between Turkey and YPG] but doing everything we can to defuse the situation," Marine Corps Maj.

The US probably won't leave northwest Syria for a while, and its presence will help deter fighting between the two sides.

The skirmishes that have happened between Turkey and the YPG have happened in areas where there is no US troop presence.

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