Radio Islam International – 2019/01/23

After days of back and forth over U.S President Donald Trump’s decision to pull-out American troops from Syria, a U.S. military official confirmed that the process of withdrawal has begun.

Lecturer of Political Sociology at the University of Cambridge – Miley Thomas Jeffrey told Radio Islam that the decision by Trump to pull US troops out of Syria threatens to escalate hostilities and tensions within the NATO alliance.

“Trumps announcement came as quite a shock given the long standing position of the US central command that the alliance with the YPG forces was a very central to the American strategy in the Middle East, Trump is quite a wild card, and it’s not clear where the decision came from.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said the withdrawal had already begun.

Speaking to Radio Islam from Istanbul, Middle East political analyst and commentator Ceylan Ozgul says the relationship between the US and Turkey is a difficult one.

“The US have to understand that Turkey’s stance against a Kurdish state will never be accepted by Turkish people.”

Listen to the full discussion below…