Syria war: ‘Sometimes you have to let them fight like kids,’ Trump says of Turkey’s offensive against Kurds

‘It was pretty vicious, and the Kurds, who are our friends, and Turkey’s our friend, but they fought, it was tougher, I mean, it was nasty,’ says US president in rambling Texas rally speech

Donald Trump has likened Turkey’s invasion of Kurdish-held regions in northern Syria to a squabble among children, while endorsing Ankara’s objective of pushing out Kurdish fighters and their families from a so-called “safe zone”.

Turkey’s military and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters unleashed an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) a week ago, two days after the US president announced he was ordering American troops out of the area. The SDF had fought against Isis alongside US special forces.

Ankara views the YPG, which constitutes a large contingent of the SDF, as an extension of the Kurdish Workers’ Party – a banned separatist group based in Turkey and Iraq. Mr Trump has signalled that Ankara will face no long-term consequences for its actions.

Addressing a rally in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday night, the president said: “It was unconventional, what I did. I said, ‘They’re going to have to fight a little while’. Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Then people find out how tough the fighting is ... Sometimes you have to let them fight. It’s like two kids in a lot, you’ve got to let them fight and then you pull them apart.

“But it was unconventional, but they fought for a few days, and it was pretty vicious, and the Kurds, who are our friends, and Turkey’s our friend, but they fought, it was tougher, I mean, it was nasty.”

He added: “And you couldn’t make a deal for 15, think of it, for 15 years, 20 years, they couldn’t make a deal. The Kurds didn’t want to move, Turkey didn’t want to budge, and Turkey was having a lot of bad things happen from this region, in all fairness to Turkey, they were having a lot of bad – but they didn’t want – now all of a sudden, they’re fighting, it’s not fun having bullets go all over the place.

“And we went there and we said, ‘We want a pause’, and the Kurds have been terrific, they’re going to move back a little bit, we’re going to keep Isis all nice and locked up.

“Without a little tough love – you know what tough love is, right? – they would’ve never made this deal.”

Earlier on Thursday, after touching down in Fort Worth, Mr Trump touted the ceasefire his administration claimed to have brokered through a visit to Ankara by Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, the vice president and secretary of state. The pair met Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan before Mr Pence announced a 120-hour pause in Operation Peace Spring that would allow Kurdish fighters to retreat deeper into northern Syria.

His decision to withdraw support for the Kurds and accede to Turkish demands was “an incredible outcome”, Mr Trump told reporters, and reiterated Turkey’s position on the Syrian border region. He said: “In all fairness, they’ve had a legitimate problem with it, they had terrorists, they had a lot of people in there that they couldn’t have.”

“They’ve suffered a lot of loss of lives also, and they had to have it cleaned out,” he added, in remarks that opponents called “chilling” and “the language of ethnic cleansing”.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing Democratic congresswoman with whom Mr Trump has carried on a bitter feud, tweeted: “The President of the United States is using the language of ethnic cleansing. If we allow him to continue, who would he use it on next?”

And Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, said in a statement on his website: “[Mr Trump’s] explanation that ‘They had to have it cleaned out’ is chilling. I’ll have numerous questions for the administration about how they will protect against ethnic cleansing in the region.”

On Friday morning, Turkish newspapers crowed about what amounts to a huge political win for Mr Erdogan. “Erdogan stood firm, the West bent its knee. Turkey’s victory in safe zone,” said the Star, while Yeni Safak wrote: “Turkey got everything it wanted. Big victory”.