The incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will reconsider the U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) ties with the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian branch YPG, according to a former NATO commander.
Washington’s support for the PKK/YPG has rattled Turkish-American ties for years.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union, launched a bloody campaign of terrorism in the 1980s, targeting Turkish security forces and civilians, primarily in the southeastern Türkiye, close to the border with Iraq.
More than 40,000 people were killed in the acts of terrorism, while the PKK leadership retains a swath of territory in Iraq’s north, where they have hideouts. In Syria, it occupies oil-rich regions with U.S. support under the pretext of fighting Daesh terrorists.
“Given the integrity of the transition (Trump’s presidency), I suspect that all of these areas have the potential to cause genuine friction, as they should, and they could potentially escalate from competition to crisis to conflict,” said General Tod D. Wolters, who served in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. European Command (EUCOM) until his retirement in 2022.
Wolters would support a new Trump administration’s comprehensive revision of its “close relationship” with the PKK/YPG, he told Anadolu Agency (AA) after a Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday.
“I don’t know what the outcome would be but I know CENTCOM sees in regards to the PKK/YPG, where the U.S. stands, where CENTCOM stands and what kind of dialogue there must be between Türkiye, NATO and USEUCOM when it intervenes,” Wolters said.
NATO member Türkiye has carried out several cross-border operations against the YPG in recent years and has since threatened more.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently said Ankara could mount a new offensive against the PKK/YPG in northern Syria to create new safe zones along its border, after saying that he would discuss a possible U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria with Trump.