(Bloomberg) -- Turkish troops have begun crossing into northeastern Syria to force back Kurdish militants controlling the border area, a Turkish official told Bloomberg, days after Donald Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way.
A small forward group of Turkish forces entered Syria early Wednesday at two points along the frontier, close to the Syrian towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, in preparation for the broader offensive, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There was no immediate comment from Kurdish-led forces, who vowed earlier in a televised news conference from Syria’s northern city of Hasake to defend themselves against any Turkish offensive.
The Turkish lira held steady as the first stages of the incursion got underway, changing hands at about 5.831 per dollar after erasing an earlier gain of 0.2%.
Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said “deployments and work is still underway regarding the operation,” according to state-run TRT television.
In a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy, Trump told Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call on Sunday that dozens of American troops who’d been working closely with Kurdish-led forces in the fight against Islamic State would pull back, effectively clearing the way for a Turkish advance.
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The White House statement appeared to surprise allies at home and abroad. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they would fight to defend their “own people,” potentially relegating the battle against Islamic State.
A number of Trump allies, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, said the move was “a shot in the arm for the bad guys.” Analysts said a U.S. pullback could ultimately play into the hands of Russia, whose military intervention helped turn the tide of the Syrian civil war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.
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Syria’s Kurdish militant YPG group has been a U.S. partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria and has tens of thousands of captured militants and their families in its custody in camps and detention centers in northeastern Syria. The U.S. has said Turkey would be responsible for those detainees but it was not clear whether there was a mechanism in place to ensure they would not escape and regroup.
Turkey sees the YPG as a threat due to its link to the separatist PKK, another Kurdish group the Turkish government been battling for decades. It’s considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union.
Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan’s chief of communications, had written on Twitter early Wednesday that Turkish troops, along with the Free Syrian Army, would cross the border shortly.
“YPG militants have two options: They can defect or we will have stop them from disrupting our counter-ISIS efforts,” he wrote.
(Recats with detail in paragraph 2, lira in paragraph 4, defense minister in paragraph 5.)
