President Trump on Wednesday announced he is removing sanctions against Turkey after Ankara made its five-day ceasefire “permanent” in its fight against Kurdish forces in Syria.

“I have, therefore, instructed the secretary of the treasury to lift all sanctions imposed Oct. 14 in response to Turkey’s original offensive moves against the Kurds,” Trump said.

“So the sanctions will be lifted unless something happens that we’re not happy with,” he added, noting that “permanent in that part of the world” can be defined as “questionable.”

Saying Turkey, Syria and “all forms of Kurds” have been fighting for centuries, Trump said he will “let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand.”

“We have done them a great service and we’ve done a great job for all of them, and now we’re getting out,” he said, although he added that some troops will remain in Syria “where they have the oil.”

Trump lauded Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for negotiating a five-day cease-fire with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that allowed Kurdish fighters to retreat from northern Syria.

“So this enabled them to do so. Countless lives are now being saved as a result of our negotiation with Turkey and an outcome reached without spilling American blood — no injuries, nobody shot, nobody killed,” Trump said.

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else,” he said.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Turkey for invading Syria, hiking tariffs on Turkish steel imports and canceling negotiations over a $100 billion trade deal.

Trump defended his decision to pull American forces during a phone call earlier this month with Erdogan, who said he wanted to launch a military operation against the Kurds.

“Halting the incursion by military force would have required deploying tens of thousands of American troops against Turkey, a NATO ally, and a country the United States has developed a very good relationship with,” Trump said.

Trump also said he had spoken to Kurdish leader Gen. Mazloum Abdi, claiming Abdi expressed his thanks to the president and said although a few ISIS members escaped during the fighting, “they’ve largely been recaptured.”

But US special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday that “we do not know where they [the ISIS fighters] are.”

Jeffrey spent a second day testifying after telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Trump didn’t consult or alert him to the decision to withdraw the troops.

Trump made his comments at the White House as Russian military police began conducting patrols on the Syria border as part of the agreement reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan to create a “terror-free safe zone” in northern Syria.

The Kurds have until Tuesday to withdraw from the area or Erdogan said he would resume military operations against them.

With Wire Services