John Bolton arrives in Turkey for tense talks over Syria policy

The US national security adviser, John Bolton, has arrived in Ankara for tense talks with Turkish officials over Syria policy, 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.

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.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/john-bolton-arrives-in-turkey-for-tense-talks-over-syria-policy/ar-BBRWqyt

Keystone cop style diplomacy.