The timing of the Turkish foreign minister’s unexpected phone call today with his Russian counterpart in the middle of US-Turkey talks on Syria is the latest sign that Washington and Ankara remain hopelessly at odds over how to move forward in the region.
Why it matters: Mevlut Cavusoglu’s call to Sergey Lavrov was made “upon the initiative of the Turkish side,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Syria dossier topped the agenda.
The call comes as Turkey is increasingly expressing its displeasure over the Donald Trump administration’s reluctance to allow Ankara to retain a powerful military presence in northeastern Syria, where the Americans’ Kurdish allies are in control. A Turkey-US joint task force charged with coordinating the withdrawal of US forces from Syria is meeting this week in Ankara for the second time. Recent statements from the Turkish side suggest things aren’t going well.
On Tuesday, an official from the Turkish Foreign Ministry told Hurriyet Daily News that the United States only wants to give Turkey a symbolic place in a proposed coalition force to oversee a safe zone in northeastern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the lead on Wednesday, voicing his opposition to a US offer to hand over control of the safe zone to a joint force with Germany and France. Erdogan insisted that the proposed safe zone be under Turkey’s control.
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