The statements of former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Türkiye are delusive, exaggerated and hypocritical, said Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu Thursday.
In his recently published memoir "Never Give an Inch," Washington's former top diplomat claimed that the Turkish army did not have the capacity of defeating Daesh after which the U.S. decided to work with the PKK's Syrian wing, the YPG.
"I believe Mike Pompeo, our former counterpart, has written this book to launch his presidential candidate campaign," Çavuşoğlu said during a joint press conference with Thailand's Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai in the capital Ankara.
“The fact that he said he saw the Turkish army did not have the capacity to defeat Daesh is noteworthy. First of all, it is not true that engagement with the PKK/YPG started in the (Donald) Trump period, this started in the Obama period. So, it is not their decision," Çavuşoğlu clarified.
He reiterated that the Turkish army was the sole NATO army to fight Daesh on the field while it eliminated 4,500 Daesh terrorists.
“While we were eliminating Daesh terrorists from Syria, the U.S., in the period of Pompeo, put Daesh terrorists into buses from Raqqa and then on planes with the YPG/PKK and sent them to Afghanistan. The reason for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan are them (the U.S.).”
“Supporting terrorism is a serious threat in the U.S. I believe there is significant disinformation in order not to be subject to legal procedures.”
Pompeo and then Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Ankara in 2019 to discuss Türkiye’s Operation Peace Spring and the situation in Syria with the hope to convince Ankara to halt its operation in Washington's ally, the YPG. A meeting was held with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after which Pence pledged to Türkiye that the YPG/PKK terrorist group would withdraw from the region of Operation Peace Spring – a pledge that has not been fulfilled until this day.
“In the meeting in 2019, I was beside Pompeo from the beginning to the end. We saw that he (Pompeo) was disturbed by the meeting getting prolonged and wanted to enter the bilateral talks. I told him that one of them was a president and the other a deputy president and that it would not be right in terms of protocol and etiquette to enter unless the leaders called us in.”
On the meeting, Pompeo wrote in his book that “Without permission, I walked down the hall and tried to push open the door of the room that Erdoğan and the vice president were meeting in. It was locked. I then told my counterpart that we were going to break through the door – I was worried that Vice President Pence was being subjected to the same three-hour video of the 2016 coup that I had been forced to watch on my first visit to Türkiye as CIA director in 2017.”
"Now, we understand why he was disturbed," Çavuşoğlu added.
Responding to his comments, Çavuşoğlu added, "There is a tweet that (Pompeo) deleted that night (about July 15). We understand he supported the coup attempt. This is why he was disturbed by the video."
The Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gülen orchestrated the defeated coup, which left 251 people dead and 2,734 injured.
FETÖ was also behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.
On the other side, Pompeo said that Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın and Intelligence Chief Hakan Fidan repeatedly stressed the ties between the PKK and YPG. "They claimed that if the United States supported the SDF, it would rupture our relationship with Türkiye," Pompeo said, referring to the YPG.
Describing a meeting with Kalın and Fidan in 2017 in the U.S., Pompeo said: "I’ve never seen such anger erupt so quickly in a room. Kalın and Fidan exploded and then left quickly. It wasn’t great for the relationship, but the United States had made the right decision."
Speaking to Hürriyet news, Kalın said: “We told them openly that the U.S. policy on the PYD/YPG is wrong. Hakan Fidan explained the developments in the Syrian field in detail.”
“He wrote that we got angry, this was our clear attitude. What he called anger was our clear demeanor,” Kalın continued.
“You inherited this policy from the Obama era. It is a great inconsistency that you continue with the Syria policy while smashing all other policies of the Obama era. You found yourself with this policy, you did not invent it,” he added.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Türkiye and the European Union. Washington’s support for the YPG has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara.
The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria to fight against the Daesh terrorist group. On the other hand, Türkiye strongly opposed the YPG terrorist group’s presence in northern Syria. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.’ support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Türkiye and terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.
Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to YPG terrorists, despite its NATO ally’s security concerns.
Criticizing Khashoggi, Pompeo said: “To be clear, Khashoggi was a journalist to the extent that I and many other public figures are journalists.”
He described “Khashoggi” as an activist and added: “He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was—and too many people in the media were not.”
