Keeping the right people happy

Oh, really?

US pundits, politicians and military commanders may not be happy about Trump pulling troops out of Syria, but Putin and Erdoğan are.  Trump mission accomplished.

“If the USA made that decision then it’s the right one,” Putin said during a nationally televised press conference on Thursday, repeating complaints that US troop deployments in Syria were illegal because they were not agreed upon with the Assad government. He said he agreed with the US president, Donald Trump, that a “serious blow” had been struck against Isis, saying: “Donald is right, I agree with him.”

  Guardian

Donald is right. They're on a first name basis now.

Throughout the Syrian war, Turkey has prioritised managing Kurdish ambitions in Syria, and potential implications for its own Kurdish populations, above all else. Ankara sees the YPG in Syria as indistinguishable from Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) militants inside Turkey. Though Syria’s Kurds say they have no interest in full autonomy, and the PKK has said it no longer aspires to an independent state, Ankara views the militant groups as dangerous subversives who threaten its borders.

On Wednesday morning, days after speaking by phone with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump tweeted: “We have defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency” – a claim at odds with his own administration’s assessments. In August this year, the Pentagon assessed there were still as many as 14,500 Isis fighters still in Syria.

[...]

The SDF responded to the announcement with a blunt statement. “The war against Islamic State has not ended and Islamic State has not been defeated,” it said. Any withdrawal would “create a political and military vacuum in the area, leaving its people between the claws of hostile parties”.

Other Kurdish leaders said the mooted abandonment would cause damage to Kurdish movements elsewhere in the region.

“We have every right to be afraid,” Arin Sheikmos, a Kurdish journalist and commentator, told the Associated Press. “If the Americans pull out and leave us to the Turks or the [Syrian] regime, our destiny will be like the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991. Neither the regime, nor Iran nor Turkey, will accept our presence here.”