SYRIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE/TURKEY: “US National Security Advisor John Bolton made ‘a serious mistake’ telling reporters that the United States would only pull out of Syria if Turkey pledged not to attack its Kurdish allies there, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Tuesday…The extraordinary public rebuke comes as the US has been sending starkly divergent messages on Syria and signals further tension in the US-Turkey relationship. President Donald Trump announced late last month that the US had defeated ISIS in Syria and was pulling its 2,000 troops out of the country ‘now.’ But Bolton — who is currently on a four-day trip to Israel and Turkey — appeared to add several conditions to Trump’s announcement, saying over the weekend that the withdrawal was contingent upon preventing ISIS from reviving itself and on obtaining security guarantees from the Turks for US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria. And White House sources say the President himself agrees with Bolton.”
–Bianca Britton, Isil Sariyuce, Nicole Gaouette and Kevin Liptak, “Turkey’s Erdogan slams Bolton, as Trump position on Syria seems to shift,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 8, 2019 7:09 pm