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It takes years, often decades, to build relationships in international politics. Sometimes a single tweet is enough to destroy them or at least damage them. Turkey will be "economically destroyed" if it attacks the Kurds in northern Syria, US President Donald Trump wrote on Sunday evening on Twitter.
It was such a rare threat among NATO partners. Turkey's response promptly followed: "You can not get anything by threatening Turkey economically, we will not bow to any threat," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.
The relationship between Ankara and Washington has been heavily weighted for months:
Turkey considers the YPG a PKK spin-off
The conflict over the relationship with the Kurdish YPG militia could now lead to a definitive rupture between the two NATO partners. The United States is successfully fighting the terrorist group "Islamic State" (IS) in Syria along with the YPG. Turkey, on the other hand, considers the YPG to be an offshoot of the PKK guerrilla organization, which is classified by the EU and the United States as a terrorist organization. Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Monday that there is no difference between IS, PKK and YPG.
When Trump announced in December, after a phone call with Erdogan surprisingly to withdraw American troops from Syria, the dispute seemed resolved on short notice. Now it is intensifying again. The US Foreign Minister, Mike Pompeo, reiterated at the beginning of January that they would not allow Turkey to "massacre the Kurds", causing outrage in Ankara. Erdogan received US security adviser John Bolton during his visit to the Turkish capital last week.
The Turkish army invaded the Syrian city of Afrin a year ago to bring out the YPG from the border area. Now Erdogan would like to extend the mission in the north-east of the country. The Turkish government has moved more soldiers and tanks to the Syrian border this weekend. "We will do everything necessary to kill the terrorists," Erdogan said.
An increasingly unlikely peaceful solution
However, the US government is still convinced of finding a compromise with Turkey. Trump announced in his tweet on Sunday that he wanted to create a 32-kilometer "security zone" between Turkey and Syria. What exactly does it mean, the president of the United States, however, has not elaborated.
Since most Kurdish cities, such as Kobane or Kamischli, are located near the border with Turkey, Erdogan would certainly succeed if the YPG withdrew from the area. It is still unclear if he is wiping out a military operation – now that American soldiers are leaving Syria anyway.
It remains to be questioned whether the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his supporters, Russia and Iran, would engage in such an agreement. Trump's tweet made a peaceful solution to the conflict in northern Syria even more unlikely.
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