MESOPOTAMIA NEWS INSIDER : Trump’s Syria, anti-Daesh envoy Jeffrey to visit Turkey

DAILY SABAH  – ISTANBUL –  Updated 03.03.2019

U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement and anti-Daesh efforts James Jeffrey will come to Turkey tomorrow, the White House said in a statement on Sunday.The U.S. currently has more than 2,000 troops deployed in Syria, but announced last December that they were leaving, revising their statement last week to say some 200-400 would stay.One of Turkey’s top concerns is that U.S., while withdrawing, takes back the weapons and ammunition it gave to the terrorist PKK-affiliated People’s Protection Units (YPG), as it pledged.

Turkey and the U.S. remain at odds over the latter’s Syria policy, which is centered on support to the globally-recognized terrorist group PKK’s Syrian wing YPG. The U.S. allied itself with the YPG to fight Daesh in Syria, but Turkey argued that using one terror group to fight another makes no sense.

Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Turkey, has also confessed that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, are indeed the Syrian affiliates of the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist group by the U.S. and EU as well.

“That local partner since 2014 has been the Democratic Union Party which is the Syrian offshoot of PKK but we have not designated it as a terrorist organization, which we did with the PKK,” Jeffrey said.