Turkey claims Trump agreed to stop arming Syrian Kurds

Turkey’s foreign minister said Friday that President Trump told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. would no longer supply arms to Syrian Kurdish fighters.

According to The Associated Press, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he was with Erdogan when Trump vowed in a telephone call to stop supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria, known by the initials YPG. 

“Mr. Trump clearly stated that he had given clear instructions and that the YPG won’t be given arms, and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago,” Cavusoglu said in a news conference, according to the AP.

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The claim that Trump promised to stop arming the YPG appeared to take some U.S. officials who work on issues in the region by surprise, the AP reported. The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to the AP’s requests for comment.

The Turkish government considers the YPG to be terrorists, because of their ties to Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

Trump tweeted earlier on Friday that he would be speaking to Erdogan about ongoing issues in the Middle East, saying that it was a “mistake” for the U.S. to “be there in the first place.”

“Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East,” he wrote on Twitter. “I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!”