The New York Times quotes Vice President and Rafik Hariri Center Director Francis J. Ricciardone on how Turkey’s focus on crushing Kurdish separatists complicates the fight against ISIS:

Francis J. Ricciardone, a former Ambassador to Turkey who is now Vice President and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council in Washington, told reporters on Tuesday that the deal was not entirely at the expense of the Syrian Kurds, who could benefit from what he called a shift in Turkish policy toward them.

He said that Turkey appeared to have adopted the West’s policy of differentiating between the PKK and the Syrian Kurds.

The PKK, he said, “is operating against the Turkish state, and we consider it an international terrorist group,” while the Syrian Kurds had “explicitly long ago taken on ISIS” and aligned with the Americans.

Read the full article here.

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