Bolton, Joseph Dunford and Mike Pompeo are due to begin a tour of Arab capitals on Tuesday to reassure allies and clarify policy

The US national security adviser, John Bolton, is expected to hold tense talks with Turkish officials in Ankara over Syria on Tuesday, after he placed conditions on a US troop withdrawal promised by Donald Trump.

Bolton and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford, are in Turkey, as the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is due to begin a tour of Arab capitals on Tuesday, largely to reassure allies and clarify policy after the president’s abrupt announcement last month that the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria and the roughly 2,000 US troops still in the country would be leaving.

Mattis resignation triggered by phone call between Trump and Erdoğan Read more

Trump made the decision on the spur of the moment halfway through a telephone conversation on 14 December 2018 with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had urged him to leave the counter-terrorist effort in northern Syria to Turkey.

Erdoğan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, sharply criticised Bolton for his insistence that Turkey not attack Kurdish Syrian forces who have fought with the US against Isis. Ankara sees those forces as a branch of militant Kurdish insurgent inside Turkey and describes them as terrorists.

Against a backdrop of friction and uncertainty, it is unclear who Bolton will be seeing in Ankara. No meetings had been confirmed by Monday afternoon.

The Pentagon was initially told to plan for the withdrawal of US soldiers within 100 days. But during to a visit to Jerusalem on Sunday, Bolton said the withdrawal would depend on conditions inside Syria and on Turkish actions.

“There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal,” Bolton said.

“Timetables or the timing of the withdrawal occurs as a result of the fulfillment of the conditions and the establishment of the circumstances that we want to see. And once that’s done, then you talk about a timetable.”

Bolton said that one of those conditions would be the total destruction of Isis, who the president had claimed had already been defeated.

“It’s very clear, we’re going to withdraw, we’re going to protect American forces during the withdrawal period, but the president also expects it would be able to accomplish the destruction of the Isis territorial caliphate, and other Isis personnel and facilities that are potentially dangerous to us as we leave,” Bolton said.

“It’s also very important that as we discuss with members of the coalition [and] other countries that have an interest, like Israel and Turkey, that we expect that those who have fought with us in Syria in the opposition, particularly the Kurds but everybody who’s fought with us, who’s not put in jeopardy by the coalition withdrawal.”

Sign up for the new US morning briefing

US troops, as well as special forces from the UK and France, have fought alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to oust Isis from almost all its “caliphate” in Syria. The SDF is led by the Kurdish Protection Units (YPG) which has strong links with Kurdish Workers’ party (PKK) militants in Turkey, a source of constant tension between Ankara and Washington.

“The issue is PKK/YPG are making efforts to establish an order by oppressing Kurds who don’t obey them, and by their terrorist activities against our country,” Kalin said, in a rebuke to Bolton. “There is no doubt that a terror group cannot be an ally of the US.”

“There is deep disappointment in Ankara with the US administration, and right now Turkish policy-makers are trying to assess whether this is a policy shift or whether it is empty words and the policy will change again,” Sinan Ülgen, a former Turkish diplomat and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe thinktank.

The White House denied there had been a policy shift, and Trump went on Twitter on Monday to denounce the New York Times for its reporting of Bolton’s comments.

“No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!..” Trump tweeted. Bolton retweeted the president, adding “My thoughts exactly.

Pompeo said in an interview published on Monday: “We need to have long conversations with the Turks about what this will look like after withdrawal.”

The secretary of state said that the US would maintain its relationship with the Syrian Kurds. “We will find a relationship with them that accommodates all of our interests,” he told Bloomberg News.

Pompeo is due to embark on a tour of eight Arab capitals, with the aim of steadying alliances in the wake of Trump’s surprises announcement and the subsequent resignation of US defence secretary James Mattis.

Trump tweeted on 19 December: “We have defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency.”

During his heated phone call with Erdoğan five days earlier, he is reported to have declared: “OK, it’s all yours. We are done.”

By Sunday, however, he appeared to agree with Bolton that the withdrawal would be conditional. “We are pulling back in Syria. We’re going to be removing our troops,” he told reporters. But he added: “We won’t be finally pulled out until Isis is gone.”

Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security, said: “I think there is an intramural battle going on within the administration by the designated Syria policy team, trying to repair damage done by the president’s announcement.”

He added: “Trump came off a bad month in December and thought that the Syria announcement would be a quick win for his base.”