Rex Tillerson
Turkey,FM Çavuşoğlu US have ‘come to terms’ to normalize ties, Manbij is priority:
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu have agreed that Washington and Ankara will “no longer act alone” in Syria. The US still urged Turkey to “show restraint” in Afrin.
After weeks of tensions between the US and Turkey, with the two NATO powers perilously close to fighting on opposite sides of the conflict in northern Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to try to calm the mood.
Washington and Ankara are at odds over Turkey’s offensive in the northwestern Syria region of Afrin which seeks to drive the Kurdish YPG from the area. The YPG had been Washington’s most effective Syrian ally in the fight against the militant “Islamic State” (IS) group.
‘Normalizing’ relations
“We are not going to act alone any longer, not the US doing one thing, Turkey doing another,” Tillerson said at a joint press conference in Ankara. “We will work together … we have good mechanisms on how we can achieve this, there is a lot of work to be done,” he said.
Tillerson also said that Syria and the US had “precisely the same” objectives for the conflict in Syria, namely defeating IS, stabilizing the wartorn country, and creating a unified and democratic nation. Both the US and Turkey oppose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“We are agreed on normalizing relations again,” Cavusoglu said at the press conference, adding that Washington-Ankara ties were at a “critical phase.”