Senior military officials meet in Ankara after Turkey expressed alarm at Kurdish role in move to retake Isis stronghold

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Senior US military officials have met their Turkish counterparts in Ankara to seek approval for the launch of a largely Kurdish-led move to isolate Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.



An alliance of Kurdish and Arab armed groups – the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – announced on Sunday that the isolation of Raqqa had started as part of a pincer movement designed to defeat Isis not just in Raqqa, but in Mosul, the second city of Iraq.

The SDF claimed the US had agreed that Turkey and its factions would not play a role in the attack, and the assault would be backed by US air support.

Ankara had previously expressed alarm that the SDF is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which it considers to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) and has repeatedly targeted inside Syria.

In an effort to gauge Turkish reaction to the SDF’s announcement, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Joseph Dunford, met his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, in Ankara on Sunday.

The US regards the SDF as the most effective fighting force in northern Syria but Turkey has repeatedly said it will not tolerate a large Kurdish role in the attack on Raqqa and has been fighting to limit the Kurdish-controlled area in Syria.

Announcing the assault on Raqqa at a press conference in Ain Issa, about 30 miles north of Raqqa, Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the SDF, said the “major battle to liberate Raqqa and its surroundings has begun”.

Ahmed said the operation – called Wrath of the Euphrates – would involve about 30,000 fighters and had begun on Saturday night.

She said the operation aimed to free Raqqa from “the forces of global, obscurantist terrorism represented by Daesh [Isis] that took it for their presumed capital”.

The SDF spokesman Talal Sello said the operation would proceed in two phases, “first liberating the countryside around Raqqa and isolating the city, and secondly taking control of the city”.

The announcement came as US-backed Iraqi forces continued fighting in the eastern edges of Mosul. Kurdish officials said the two campaigns were not coordinated, but simply “good timing”.

Isis fighters fought back against Iraqi troops with car bombs and ambushes on Sunday, stalling the advance in their northern Iraqi stronghold. Maj Gen Maan al-Saadi, a commander in Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism force, told state television that Isis fighters had launched more than 100 car bombs in the city’s eastern districts.

Suspected Isis bombings killed at least 20 people elsewhere in Iraq.

Washington says the battle for Raqqa will overlap with the assault on Mosul, in part because of concerns that any delay would allow Isis to use it as a base to launch attacks on targets abroad.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) north of Raqqa in Syria. Photograph: Rodi Said/Reuters

The French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said on Sunday that an offensive on Raqqa could not be treated as distinct from the Mosul assault.

“We have to go to Raqqa … it will automatically be local forces that will liberate Raqqa even if French forces, US forces, the coalition contribute with airstrikes to dismantle Daesh,” Le Drian told Europe 1 radio.

“Mosul-Raqqa can’t be disassociated because Islamic State and the territories it occupies span that area,” he said.

US officials have acknowledged that ousting Isis from Raqqa poses tougher political challenges than the offensive on Mosul, and have suggested the initial stage would involve isolating the city before forces try to move in.

The US is working to rebalance the ethnic mix of the SDF, which also includes Turkoman and some Arab fighters, since it knows that a Kurdish assault on Raqqa would both be deeply unpopular inside Raqqa and also not something the Kurds would wish for.

In a defiant message on Sunday the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accused Europe of abetting terrorism with its support for the PKK and said he did not care if Europe called him a dictator as he cracked down on the Kurdish militant group and its sympathisers.



“Europe, as a whole, is abetting terrorism. Even though they declared the PKK a terrorist organisation, this is clear … We see how the PKK can act so freely and comfortably in Europe,” Erdoğan said in a televised speech.

“I don’t care if they call me dictator or whatever else, it goes in one ear, out the other. What matters is what my people call me,” he said.

Turkey has drawn international criticism following the detention on Friday of the leaders of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP), parliament’s second largest opposition party, as part of a terrorism investigation. The government accuses the HDP of links to the PKK, which the party denies.

