Sputnik - Washington and Paris are seemingly seeking ways to mend fences with Turkey after Ankara's trust in the US has largely been undermined, Turkish analysts suggested while speaking to Sputnik. The US and France want to boost their positions in Syria, however, it is unlikely that they will succeed in the near future, they added.




It is highly unlikely that US President Donald Trump will withdraw from Syria any time soon, while French President Emmanuel Macron's pledges to mediate between Ankara and the Kurdish militias on the ground is nothing but wishful thinking, Turkish analysts told Sputnik.
"Just 15 days ago Trump said that Obama's withdrawal from Iraq was a mistake and that he would not take such a step in Syria," Baris Doster, political scientist at Marmara University, told Sputnik Turkey. "Moreover, by now the US has invested heavily in [Kurdish] self-defense units and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which they regard as their ground force. To date [the US] has supplied Kurdish formations with 5,000 trucks of weapons, while planning to create a regular 50,000-strong army out of the members of these formations."


According to Doster, there are at least 20 American bases in the territory of Syria. The Turkish political scientist suggested that having made such huge investments, the Americans are unlikely to leave the country.
On March 29 President Trump remarked that the US may "very soon" pull out of Syria: "We're knocking the hell out of ISIS [Daesh]*. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon… we're going to be coming out of there very soon."