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The decision announced by Donald Trump to bring back the American troops deployed in Syria arouses many hostile reactions in the world but also in the United States, including within the Republican Party.
With our correspondents in Washington and Ankara, Anne Corpet and Anne Andlauer
Rare enough, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the Senate cracked a statement to denounce the decision of the US president. " A precipitous withdrawal would only benefit the regime of Assad, Russia and Iran, " he wrote to try to bend Donald Trump, before adding " American interests are defended by our leadership, not by retirement .
Senator Lindsey Graham , very close to the president, spoke of an " irresponsible " decision and said scathingly " the defeat of IS is the biggest lie of this administration. I appreciate President Trump, I'm trying to help him, but to say that IS is defeated in Syria is not true. The same is true of the party's number three in Congress, the representative Liz Cheney, who denounces an abandonment of Kurdish allies.
Trump warns Erdogan all the same
Donald Trump assures that many elected officials are on his side, and support his decision. But this Monday, it is his critics who have taken center stage. The US president, who had given the impression of unleashing his Kurdish allies, qualified his position on Monday, under international pressure and on his own, warning Turkey against any excesses.
► See also: Syria: Donald Trump's difficult balancing act
Donald Trump has threatened to severely punish the Turkish economy if the Ankara army attacks the Kurds, but in perplexing terms. These reprisals will be activated, the US president said, if the Turks " do something beyond the human ". Donald Trump justified himself on his decision, he repeated that the withdrawal of the troops of Syria was an electoral promise that he intended to hold, he said he did not want to write to the parents of soldiers killed in combat in endless wars.
These Turkish threats are not new. The Turks have been threatening for years, and sometimes they have even taken action by incursions like Jarablous, Al Bab or more recently in the Afrin region. The position of the Kurdish forces is very clear: we will fight to the end. The Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Abdi, has also been clear on this matter. We will respond forcefully to the slightest Turkish incursion into our territory.
This region of Rojava, bordering Turkey will become a zone of total war.
Mervan Qamishlou, YPG spokesperson 08/10/2019 - by Sami Boukhelifa Play
Surrounded by the impeachment process initiated by the Democrats, the president seems to activate his favorite string by diverting attention and closing the ranks of his electorate. Even if it infuriates his allies in Congress.
The thorny issue of the jihadists held by the Kurds
But if they withdraw their troops from certain areas of northern Syria, the United States will not only leave the Kurdish forces alone in front of the Turkish army, they will also put in the hands of Turkey the fate of the members of the group Islamic state that had been captured in recent years by Kurdish fighters and who are being held in camps and prisons.
So far, they have effectively overseen these jihadists who are potential dangers for our security in France but also for the entire Western world. And if indeed the Kurds release these terrorists, they risk simply getting lost in the nature and so we will have a result again catastrophic and so it is a situation on which one must be extremely attentive, and it is necessary that the French government intervene quickly to make known its decision and its will to make sure that these jihadists can not again be harmful for our security and for our public peace, as well as for our interests.
Jean-Luc Reitzer, Vice-Chairman of the Kurdish Study Group in the National Assembly 08/10/2019 - by Anthony Lattier
The number of these detainees, potentially several thousand, will depend on the extent of the Ankara offensive but there is no indication that Recep Tayyip Erdogan's country has a plan to deal with it. Asked about the subject on Monday the Turkish President has not given a clear answer, he said he asked his teams to work on the issue as will have to do, he added, France and Germany who have nationals among these jihadist detainees. It will be necessary to stop them quickly concluded Recep Tayyip Erdogan still evasive.
A new means of pressure against Europeans
So to convince US President Trump to let go of his Kurdish partners, his Turkish counterpart must have made promises that he does not necessarily have the means to hold and that presents a risk to the security of Turkey, victim in recent years of a wave of attacks attributed to the Islamic State.
This also drives some observers to wonder if Erdogan has not finally gotten more out of Washington than he wanted, and others to observe that abandoning a foreign jihadist site to the Turkish head of state, it would give it a new means of pressure against the Europeans.