We will ‘strangle’ US-backed force in Syria: Erdogan

BEIRUT/ISTANBUL: Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan threatened on Monday to "strangle" a planned 30,000-strong US-backed force in Syria "before it’s even born," as Washington’s backing for Kurdish fighters drove a wedge into relations with one of its main Middle East allies.

The United States announced its support on Sunday for plans for a "border force" to defend territory held by US-backed, Kurdish-led fighters in northern Syria.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad responded on Monday by vowing to crush the new force and drive US troops from the country. Assad’s ally Russia called the plans a plot to dismember Syria and place part of it under US control.

But the strongest denunciation came from Erdogan, who has presided as relations between the United States and its biggest Muslim ally within Nato have stretched to the breaking point. "A country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror army on our borders," Erdogan said of the United States in a speech in Ankara.

"What can that terror army target but Turkey?" "Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even born." Erdogan said Turkey had completed preparations for an operation in Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria.

The Kurdish-led regions in Syria say they need the border force to protect them against threats from Ankara and Damascus. "To prevent any attack there must be a deterrent force that protects the border between our areas and the others," Fawza Youssef, a senior Kurdish politician, told Reuters. "Until a political settlement is reached in Syria, these areas need protection. Now, there aren’t any guarantees," she said.

The United States has led an international coalition using air strikes and special forces troops to aid fighters on the ground battling Islamic State militants in Syria since 2014. It has about 2,000 troops on the ground in Syria.

The US intervention has taken place on the periphery of a near seven-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven more than 11 million from their homes. Islamic State was effectively defeated last year, but Washington says its troops are prepared to stay to make sure the militant group cannot return. For much of the war, the United States and Turkey worked together, jointly supporting forces fighting against Assad’s government.

But a US decision to back Kurdish fighters in northern Syria in recent years has enraged Ankara. Meanwhile, the Assad government, backed by Russia and Iran, has made great strides over the past two years in defeating a range of opponents, restoring control over nearly all of Syria’s main cities.

It considers the continued US presence a threat to its ambition to restore full control over the entire country. On Sunday, the US-led coalition said it was working with its militia allies, the mainly Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to set up the new force to patrol the Turkish and Iraqi borders, as well as within Syria along the Euphrates River which separates SDF territory from that held by the government.