erdogan turkey
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, at the G-20 Summit in September 2016.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The US and Turkey rarely see eye to eye these days.On Monday, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, told reporters that Ankara wants the US-led anti-ISIS coalition to wait to move on Raqqa, the jihadist group’s de facto capital in Syria, until after the operation to dislodge the group from its Iraqi stronghold, Mosul, is completed.

The announcement came as the US prepares for an imminent move on Raqqa, which defense officials feel would be more successful if it overlapped with the Mosul offensive that began two weeks ago. It also highlights the growing disconnect between American and Turkish interests in Syria, where Ankara has been working to halt the advances of Kurdish anti-ISIS militias that Washington is actively empowering.

Turkey’s request to hold off on Raqqa likely has to do with the resources it has committed to the Mosul fight and its opposition to seeing the Syrian city liberated by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces — an overwhelmingly Kurdish opposition alliance that includes Arabs, Assyrians, and Turkmen fighters.

The US appears ready to move forward with the offensive on Raqqa anyway — Defense Secretary Ash Carter told NBC last week that the battle will begin “in the next few weeks.” The administration claims, however, that it still doesn’t know who will lead the fight.

Defense officials told The Daily Beast last week that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG — which makes up the majority of SDF fighters — will help isolate Raqqa but will not enter the city itself.

Another official told The Washington Post that “this is one of the situations in which we have contacts and influence over all the actors. But we’re not in perfect control.”

But Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of US-led operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, told reporters last week that “the only force that is capable” of taking Raqqa in the short term “are the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG are a significant portion.”

syria map

Reuters

The US and Turkey have reportedly begun training Arab opposition fighters to take part in the Raqqa battle, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the US to drop “terrorist organizations” like the PYD and YPG from the operation altogether.

Turkish warplanes carried out 26 airstrikes on SDF positions in northern Syria on October 20 that killed dozens of Kurds, and Turkey has indicated that it will not hesitate in attacking them as they continue to consolidate territory and influence.

The Kurds, however, are the most capable forces fighting ISIS on the ground in Syria, and abandoning them now would likely be detrimental to the overall campaign to defeat the jihadists.