Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is back to playing his country’s NATO ally the United States against its Syrian Kurdish partners and Ankara’s tactical ally, Russia, claiming that he and President Donald Trump had carried the issue of a planned safe zone in northern Syria to a “certain point.” He implied that there was progress on this front. But is there?
In a lengthy interview with CNNTurk, Erdogan did not provide any details about what, if anything, had been decided during his Feb. 21 telephone call with Trump, saying simply that the subject of Syria “was at the fore.” He insisted, however, that any safe zone would need to be under Turkey’s control because it was Turkey’s own security that was at risk “because it's my border.”
