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Strengthening U.S.-Türkiye Relations and Advancing Relations with Syria [1]

['Thomas J. Barrack', 'U.S. Ambassador To The Republic Of Türkiye', 'U.S. Special Envoy For Syria']

Date: 2025-07

Downloadable video and photos of this briefing for use in reporting can be found here:

NEW YORK FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, 799 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA, 10TH FLOOR

MODERATOR: Okay, great. Well, welcome, everyone. Welcome to the New York Foreign Press Center. We are glad you’re here. Thank you for those in the room and for those of us joining online as well.

We are honored to have Ambassador Thomas Barrack, who’s the ambassador to the Republic of Türkiye and U.S. Special Envoy for Syria. The ambassador will offer opening remarks, followed by a time of Q&A, which I will moderate. My name is Melissa Waheibi, and we’re glad to have you here.

Sir, please, the floor is yours, and then we’ll engage in conversation.

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Thanks. And thanks, everybody, for a Friday afternoon when it’s hot and humid. I know it’s not your most fun thing, so we’ll try and make it informative. I won’t waste too much time with introductory remarks because you’re much better versed at all the things you really want to know that hopefully we can shed some light on.

We’re in the middle of a really difficult zip code at an amazingly historic time. And so all of these moving pieces – of each of these countries that the President have given in our portfolio – has an equal and opposite effect on the surrounding countries. And what we know is that the history of all of these countries has not been on our side as we drive towards peace and prosperity, which is the President’s message. Right?

So we start from a point of view as: What is our mission? And we’re always asking ourselves that every day: What is really our mission? And it’s not nation-building, and humanitarian rights are always important and critical in the process, but that’s not why we’re there. That’s not why we started there. We started in that whole part of the world in a counter-ISIS mode. So what our presence was was really that in an effort to help the local environments and nations as they were defining themselves, where they go, but primarily how do we counter ISIS from all the things that we know from the past.

So with that, I’ll turn it over to you and go wherever you’d like to go. Yes.

MODERATOR: Let me jump in real quick. I’ll give the rules of the road here. So in this time of Q&A, when it’s your turn, I will indicate that you can ask your question. Please state your name and organization. We will offer questions to those online as well; priority will go to the room. But also for those online, some of you will be able to rename yourself in Google Meet, some not, so when I call on you, please also state your name and organization. But we’ll start here in the room, and we will have time for everybody, so no stress. We’ll start here.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Ibtisam Azem, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper. I have two questions, first about your vision for Syria – what you see, where you want to go from here with the new administration.

And then talks between Israel and Syria, if you could update us there. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Yeah, great questions. So first of all, let me separate my vision from the President’s vision. So President Trump was bold and courageous, and his vision of Syria was to give it a chance. So what we’ve experienced every time the West has intervened in this part of the world, really since 1919, has not been great. So we started by Sykes-Picot and kind of dividing up the world and the nation states, and we’re living with the aftermath of that. God bless the British, but they gave away Palestine three times to three different people.

So this President is saying that’s not what I want to do. What is it that he wanted to do? Sanctions that had built up on another regime, right? The amazing thing is none of us were really expecting or anticipating that the al-Sharaa regime would, in December, ascend into Damascus. They had done a good job in Idlib, but the Assad regime was in full power and effect.

In the aftermath of this all of a sudden was Plan A, and this is what I’ll come back to in each of the instances that we’re talking about. Plan A is the al-Sharaa regime. It’s a slow transition to a new government. The President’s main message in taking sanctions off on May 13th was give them a chance. You can’t give them the chance if they’re shackled, and sanctions can always be reapplied if something drastic or bad happens.

And this idea of starting for scratch from them, sanctions gave the people hope. That’s really all that happened at that moment was a new flicker of belief on the part of the Syrian people, of all of the minorities, of all the sectarian pieces, that they could have a new slice of a hope of life after all the agony since 2011. And that’s what the President did is said: I’m going to take the sanctions off, I’m not going to unwrap them like an onion. The force and many factors today and many countries today are saying do it slowly so we can monitor them, so we can see them.

And he decided: I’m not going to do it slowly because what they need is resources; to build quickly, they need the world behind them. And so the vision is what happens in Syria is a clean canvas or a clean tapestry of an experiment of now taking this complicated area of the world – the Middle East, the Gulf, the Near East – and say: Can you recreate a fresh palette? And it’s an experiment, and we’re at the very beginning.

So the conversation between Syria and Israel – if you remember, President Trump when he lifted the sanctions was then followed by Secretary Rubio, who gave kind of five major conditions that he would like to see the al-Sharaa regime abide by, and one of them was the Abraham Accords. So the pointing towards the Abraham Accords, not signing the Abraham Accords, of saying: Can you have normalization between Syria and Israel? Which is also, by its very nature, requires normalization between Lebanon and Israel, Jordan and Israel, Iraq and Israel, and Türkiye in the middle of all of this – is a big – is a big objective.

So the idea is – and al-Sharaa has been very vocal in saying Israel is not an enemy; he’s willing to have discussions and deliberations with them about how to solve the problems in front of them, and that’ll start happening in baby steps, as it is everywhere in that neighborhood.

So our hope and anticipation is that with the bold acts of what President Trump did in supporting the B-2 bombing in Iran, that is an opportunity. That opportunity may be short-lived, which is Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, Houthis are at least at the moment on their heels. The rest of the countries can redefine for themselves if they would like a new life, a new constitution, a new blending of the sectarian environment. But it’s up to them.

So what the President did is say, I’m lifting the sanctions, I supported what I’ve always said in a hostile regime – which was ISIS and Iran – which has been clear, and now it’s up to those countries. So it’s baby steps.

QUESTION: Amelie Bottollier from AFP News Agency. Regarding the sanctions, I mean, the U.S. lifted their sanctions, but there are some UN sanctions again HTS. We heard that U.S. is also trying to have these sanctions lifted at the UN. Could you update us about the process and the discussion with the other member-states? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Yes, it’s a great question. So bilateral sanctions – the President of the United States unilaterally lifted them, which doesn’t mean they’re gone. So as we know, these layers of sanctions require different approvals and different processes to evaporate. Some of them are temporary; some of them are permanent. You saw General Waiver 25. The President issued a massive executive rescinding over a decade of other executive orders that were more and more restrictive. And you have a move going on in Congress to rescind restrictive legislation on a permanent basis that would then allow American companies, European companies, participants, with a longer focus than 180 days.

The UN has a different set of foreign terrorist organization designation from the UN, and there’s some members of the Security Council that rightly have said, we want to see more progress on things that we, the UN, are concerned with, including how the minorities are being treated. What’s the formation and type of the constitution? What happens with the foreign fighters? We talk about 20- or 25,000 foreign fighters. The integration or non-integration of those fighters is of a real concern to everybody, as are the minority rights. So you have the Druze that want it to be Druze land. You have the Alawites who want it to be Alawite land. You have the Kurds who want it to be Kurdistan.

And what Syria is saying, what Damascus is saying, that’s not going to happen – all roads lead to Damascus; one country, one nation, one military – and that’s in the process. So the UN, in part, with a couple of the important partners, says, we’re all listening to you, there’s no adversarialness, we’re all trying to figure out, and saying look, we need leverage to encourage the new government to do the right things and the right steps. My humble personal opinion is they are. They’re trying. But they’re resource-constrained. They’ve been in power now seven months, a really complicated regime, a lot of anger, hostility. You can imagine just the emotional expectation on one hand of many of the factors of their community and the emotional regrets coming side by side in a new administration. So aligning all of these into one group is – if you were a mother or father and you had four warring boys and you say okay, guys, it’s over, you’ve been fighting for three weeks, I want you to sit down at the table and watch TV and have a great time – doesn’t exactly happen in that cadence.

So the restrictions on HTS and two of the senior members of the al-Sharaa regime is under consideration. It can come off in pieces, so the Security Council can give a waiver each time there is a request; but there’s a thought amongst many of the members, some of the members, that to remove them in its entirety is a mistake, that they want to see more progress on the things that they’re important – that they’re concerned with – minority rights, foreign fighters, Al-Hol and Roj camp. And displaced persons, you have 20,000, 25,000 living in camps. The idea is they’re going to return home. The problem is that they can’t spell home; they don’t know where home is. So how do you do that in a devastated country when Europe doesn’t really want them to return to Europe, those who were participants there?

So they’re dealing with everything, drinking out of a fire hose, and what we’re all trying to do is give them the resources to be able to look at it, analyze it, without dictating to them exactly what to do.

MODERATOR: Okay. Over here.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) so much. Ambassador, just a —

MODERATOR: Please state your name and organization.

QUESTION: Ephrem Kossaify from Arab News daily. I just want to do quick – three quick follow-ups on your Beirut visit and some of the things that you said there.

First question is: If Hizballah agreed to lay down their arms, to turn themselves into a purely political party, a Lebanese party, not an Iranian proxy, is this administration ready to remove them from the foreign terrorist list, just as they did with HTS?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: It’s a great question, and I’m not running from the answer, but I can’t answer it. And there’s been so much great work, and Morgan Ortagus, who’s here with me, really started all the pieces of this puzzle of where do we go on this confessional, very complicated Lebanese religious-based sectarian map? Not easy.

And I got in trouble the other day because I said Hizballah has two parts. First of all, certainly America looks at it as a terrorist organization. So Hizballah, terrorist organization, same sentence – I’m saying it. That’s what it is. However, in Lebanon, it’s a political party. So in Lebanon you have 13 to 15 parliamentary participants. That’s Hizballah the political party, one of the parties that represents the Shias is along with the Amal party. And you have Hizballah the militant group, which we think is backed by Iran, which is the foreign terrorist organization, which we have issues with.

The process of Hizballah putting their arms down starts with the Lebanese Government process. They have to – and the council of ministers – have to authorize that mandate and that act, and Hizballah itself, the political party, has to agree to that. That has several components, because what Hizballah is saying, okay, we understand one Lebanon has to happen. Why? Because one Syria is starting to happen. So everybody on the heels of what President Trump did so boldly in Iran has started a recycling of everyone’s future. So Lebanon, which has been in constant agony since the ‘70s, in search of itself – by the way, it’s not just since the ‘70s. I, as a student, went in to try and understand why do these agreements never work. The Lebanese are the smartest, most resourceful, unbelievable people in the world. But all these agreements failed, starting from the 1949 armistice agreement, starting from the very beginning.

So then we start marching forward: the ‘67 agreement, the ‘74 agreement, the Taif Agreement. If you go back and look at the Taif Agreement, it’s an exact beginning of what Morgan and her team brilliantly negotiated in the cessation-of-hostility agreement that was in November. But they never worked, and they never work because there’s no fuel in the system. So Hizballah, in my belief – Hizballah the political party – is looking and saying: Logically for our people, the success of Lebanon has to collate the Sunnis, the Shias, the Druze, the Christians all together, and now is the time. But how do we get there? Israel has to be a component part of that. They can’t have those conversations themselves.

This crazy law in Lebanon, by the way – it stops the Lebanese from having a conversation with the Israelis. To follow what’s happened is we put together a great negotiating team to start being an intermediary. And my belief is that’s happening in spades and that everybody is being responsible in trying to run to that. So if that happened, if the council of ministers behind the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of the house agree one country, one nation, one military; Hizballah agrees over a time period to forego its major weapons, right – everybody in Lebanon is packing a 357 Magnum. I mean, it’s like having a belt. So we’re not talking about small arms. We’re talking about the weapons that could affect Israel.

If that happens, that’s a process. And you need – you need LAF, you need the military to be able to go collect them. The problem is you haven’t had any money to pay the military. So all these pieces have to come at once. You have to empower LAF. It has great respect for most of the people in Lebanon – LAF – then softly with Hizballah can say here’s the process of how we’re going to return arms, we’re going to collect arms. We’re not going to do it under civil war, because these arms are stored in garages and subterranean – under houses.

So my hope, my belief – the program’s initiative has been bold. The – Secretary Rubio has been phenomenal in saying we’ll give you the path. You choose it. We’re not going to impose on you, but you choose it. If they choose it, then the logical conclusion after that, as it relates to that party within Lebanon, it’s a reconsideration of all of those issues.

QUESTION: Mr. Barrack, also, people in Lebanon are now unsure of how satisfied the U.S. is with the Lebanese Government’s plan of action. In a press conference in Beirut, you said that you were pretty satisfied, but then told LBCI that the way the Lebanese politics has always been was about delay, detour, deflect. Which one is it?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Both. And you would agree to me. It’s only about delay, detour, and deflect. They’re much smarter than anybody else. So what’s happened is they’re satisfied with the status quo at the political level until they’re not satisfied. So what changes it? What changes it, they’re going to – they’re going to become extinct. If Lebanon doesn’t hurry up and get in line, everybody around them is – it’s a tiny little country. It’s got this confessional system that maybe makes sense or maybe doesn’t make sense. You have a defunct central bank. They haven’t passed a bank resolution law. They haven’t passed a gap law. You have a banking system that’s on its heels.

They have to redefine themselves. I think this government is ready, which was my comment. I was very encouraged. They’re standing up to the issues. And we’re not being soft with them, by the way. We’re saying: You want our help, here it is. We’re not going to dictate to you what to do. If you want it, take it. If you don’t want help, no problem, we’ll go home. So in the past, I don’t think anybody in the world could say the detour-and-deflect mechanism was how they live. Today, my hope is that we’re going to see the proof of something different.

QUESTION: Okay. One last quick one.

MODERATOR: I’m going to —

QUESTION: It’s a follow-up quickly —

MODERATOR: No, no. We’re going to move on to the – to some other journalist.

QUESTION: Last one, very quickly, on Beirut.

MODERATOR: I’m going to – we’ll come back to you if there’s time.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MODERATOR: So we’re going to – hold on one second. We’re going to go online and we’re going to offer this opportunity to Yunus. Please state your name and your organization and ask your question.

QUESTION: Can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes, go ahead.

QUESTION: Anthony Merchak from MTV Lebanon.

QUESTION: Sorry, it’s mine, isn’t it? Yunus Paksoy, CNN Turk.

MODERATOR: Yeah, Yunus, this is your turn. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for doing this and taking my question. You said the other day that federalism wouldn’t work in Syria and that there should be one Syria, one flag, and one army. Yet on the other hand, you also said last week that one of the criteria that you set forth for Ahmed al-Sharaa is to protect the SDF. Plus, the Pentagon is asking for $130 million in next year’s budget to further arm and equip the SDF. If the U.S. is indeed for one army, are you planning to disband the SDF either in the near or long term and start talking about the terms of taking away the SDF’s arms and heavy weaponry? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: That’s a really good and dangerous question. Let me answer as best I can. And of course, a lot of the elements of that are over my pay grade. We’ll try and get President Trump on the phone, and you can ask him directly what he thinks of it. But the bottom line is: We’re not dictating anything to anybody. So SDF – SDF is YPG. YPG is a derivative of PKK. You see today – I haven’t seen the news clip today – but I think that PKK today started giving up their arms. Ocalan is still on his island. By the way, I used to think it was a paradise – I said they can’t really be keeping this guy in isolation, which they do. But this is a huge thing in Türkiye, right. The PKK-Türkiye dilemma is really complicated. And YPG was a spinoff of PKK that we allied with to fight ISIS.

So there’s a big sentiment that because they were our partners, we owe them. The question is what do we owe them. We don’t owe them the ability to have their own independent government within a government. We owe them to usher an onramp to a new regime in which there’s going to be reasonableness in how they integrate with one Syrian Government. Syria has taken the position that you can’t have a Syria under federalism. You can’t have a separate Druze force dressed like Druze; a separate Alawite force dressed like Alawite’s; a separate Kurd force dressed like Kurds, and on and on and on. There’s going to be one entity. They’ve been in power now seven months trying to align these interests. It’s a very difficult issue for SDF, but we understand that.

And in looking at how SDF works and operates, which is a consensual agreement amongst all of its parties, the details matter. So they had an agreement. They had a principled agreement from March. The problem is it didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Because everybody rushed to an agreement with no specifications. The specifications matter. So now we’re at the point of really putting together the specifications, bringing everybody together and saying, like two kids in a playground, it’s time. We’ll bring you together, we’ll arbitrate, we’ll mediate, we’ll help, but we’re not going to stick around. If you guys don’t agree, don’t agree, but we’re not going to be here forever as the babysitter and the mediator.

So everywhere we are in the Middle East – this President is trying to put bumper rails around it, say its your opportunity to create a new story here. There hasn’t been a new story for a hundred years. Whatever the Ottoman Empire was, how everybody feels about it, that was 500 years of operation where there were no borders, there were no boundaries. They got along or they didn’t get along, but we didn’t have all of this hurrah. And we have the Chinese and the Russians who are also interested in seeing a tapestry and a fabric of calmness in the area. But with the SDF, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. They’ve been on opposite sides of the equation. They feel the United States is obligated to them. The United States is saying yes, we’re obligated to you to be reasonable, but if you’re not reasonable, there’s going to be another alternative.

MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. We’re going to stay online. We’re going to go to Diyar. Diyar, you can enable your microphone, state your full name and organization, and then we will come back and continue in the room.

QUESTION: Thank you so much. My name is Diyar Kurda. I’m working for Rudow Media Network. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Ambassador. I have two question.

You talked a little bit about SDF and also about PKK. So your comments on federalism and the Kurdish rights in Syria have generated significant regional tension. Kurds were not happy with that. They think that U.S. is dictating the narrative in Syria. So in your point of view, how does the U.S. view the Kurdish-led administration efforts to conserve their autonomous rights within a unified Syria? What makes you think that the federalism is not a viable solution in this context?

Second question: As you mentioned that today the first group of PKK fighters destroyed the weapons in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, how does the United States view this development, and what potential do you see it in having a – in contributing to a long-term resolution of the Kurdish issue in Türkiye? Has the U.S. played any role in facilitating or supporting this narrative? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Thanks, and it’s a very – it’s a very thoughtful question. Let me – let me start with a premise that makes all of this simple. The United States honors nation-states that are acknowledged, viable, and legal – full stop. All of the other constituencies who are vying for posture or position within another nation-state, we may have empathy for, we may have sympathy for, we may have favorites that we would like to support at various times, and it’s never worked for us – ever. Every time we’ve entered into some form of regime change – which, by the way, we didn’t do in Syria and we didn’t do in Lebanon. That was not us that made a change of the Assad regime.

So as relates to SDF, there’s no question – especially Congress has a very soft spot in their heart for SDF, and it’s been very clear that we want to pave and provide an onramp for them to join what? The Syrian Government. There’s not an indication that there’s going to be a free Kurdistan. There’s not an indication that there’s going to be a separate SDF state. There’s not an indication on our part that there’s going to be a separate Alawite state or a separate Druze state. There’s Syria. You have a structure in Syria that is unfolding. They’ll have a Syrian constitution that’ll have a Syria – a parliament. Everybody has to be able to have discussions as to how that happens.

We don’t have a dog in that hunt other than to say we want to make sure those discussions take place, that they’re fairly portrayed, and that of course we have a favorite in the race and that SDF has been very good to us along this way. We want to make sure that they’re treated fairly and that they have an opportunity – an opportunity to onboard if that’s what they want to do. If that’s not what they want to do, they have their own decisions. It’s not our decision.

MODERATOR: Great. We’re going to go to Paolo.

QUESTION: And on my second question —

QUESTION: Paolo Mastrolilli with the Italian daily La Repubblica. Thank you very much for doing this. Türkiye has also been very much involved in the negotiation between Russia and Ukraine. We are at the pivotal moment; the President is about to make a significant announcement on Monday. Could you elaborate on how do you see the situation now and the role that Türkiye can still play?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Well, thanks. And I have to say I’m extremely proud of the role that Türkiye has played in all of these instances. It’s been interpreted in America in different ways because Türkiye is also interpreted in different ways. They have been pivotal. And President Erdogan, Hakan Fidan, Ibrahim Kalin, all of the senior members of the Turkish Government have intervened on behalf of America to help find this mediative dialogue, because of course the Black Sea all funnels down to the Bosphorus and they have this very unique relationship with all of the parties.

And they’ve been incredibly helpful to us – not only in the Ukraine-Russia situation, but as it relates to Gaza and Israel. They’ve been criticized of having a relationship with Hamas. They haven’t declared Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization or an SST. But as a result, they’ve had a dialogue, like Qatar. Qatar has been one of our best friends in continuing this dialogue. If we don’t have a – if we don’t have a dialogue, if we don’t have a mechanism for the President to be able to try and intervene in these very harsh places, we’re in real trouble.

But Türkiye has been great. The hope too for them – Ukraine and Russia and the Ukrainian grain situation, if you remember – they were a big provider of the solution, as they were in the mines in the Black Sea. So I know Türkiye’s hope is that they can facilitate some end to the horrible situation that’s in process, but they’ve been great partners of ours in that endeavor.

MODERATOR: Great, thank you. We will hit everybody here, but we’ll start with Adla.

QUESTION: Me? Okay, thanks. Ambassador, Adla Massoud from The National. You said that implementing a plan to disarm Hizballah would require carrots and sticks. So is the U.S. willing to dangle any carrots to help the Lebanese Government disarm Hizballah and the Palestinian faction?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Yes, we’re willing to help define carrots in two languages that have a hard time understanding each other – in Hebrew and Arabic, right? So what are – what are the issues for Hizballah? Number one, a cessation of artillery. How do we stop the fighting? The famous five points. Israel occupies five points across the territory that they view as the south, including the south of Litani, and people want to go back to their houses – primarily Shia-oriented, a big part of that being Hizballah. They want the freedom to be able to go back to their houses without the fear of another attack happening.

So you have a ceasefire, you have some normalization of those five points. When does Israel feel comfortable that they’re not going to be attacked by Hizballah – kind of that standdown. And you need the Plan B that we always talk about. So what’s the future of the south? What’s the future for Hizballah? And that requires funding and development and programs along the south, and the Gulf states are ready to provide that. So from the restoration of infrastructure – electricity, water, power, those kind of things – to the development of industrial projects, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and now the UAE are coming in and saying, “If we can get to where everybody can just calm down, we will help redevelop that portion of Lebanon,” which is huge.

Then there’s hope for the Shias, partly which are Hizballah, but the other part is they need to feel that there’s protection. In the event that something goes wrong, we have this thing called the mechanism. The mechanism is a fantastic entity but actually is designed to be the mediator between Israel and Lebanon and all the factions if something goes wrong. So the mechanism is a military operation along with UNIFIL, which is a United Nations operation, which Israel says, “We think we’re going to be attacked, we think there’s rockets, missiles and UAVs moving from point A to point B,” They phone this in to the mechanism. The mechanism then with LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces, says, “Okay, we’re going to take care of it.”

How do they take care of it without starting a civil war? This is where the problem has been, is go knock on the door and say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the rockets in your garage have to leave.” It’s complicated. So what we’ve done is present – and Morgan started this process – present a series of baby steps of saying, here’s how we can get to that solution, and we will help you bolster your military, the LAF. We’ll help you have these discussions with Israel because we honestly think that Israel is fair-minded in how they want to look at it, and we’ll create Plan B for the Shias, which is development and money that’ll come in through the south that can’t be funneled from Beirut, that’s not going to be dissipated by the corruption that’s existed – not that these leaders are corrupt. I don’t think the leaders who are there now are corrupt, but Lebanon has been inundated with past corruption.

Again, we have a time frame on this which is limited, quite honestly, by the patience of President Trump. And one thing that we’ve seen is he’s tolerant. He loves Lebanon, by the way. He came out – I don’t think there’s been another president since Dwight Eisenhower, right, who came out and really expressed his appreciation and love of a place, but they’ve got to get out of their own way. They just need to get with it, but they are. They’re interacting with us in a – which is why I said I’m really enthused. I can be disappointed, but I’m enthused.

QUESTION: Okay. Why, in your opinion, is the Lebanese Government taking so long to disarm Hizballah? What’s holding them back?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: The fear of the civil war. I think bottom line, honestly, that delicate balance. Every family, as you know, in Lebanon has been touched by tragedy, and the civil wars have been an abject disaster. So we’re not only dealing with Hizballah, but we have armed Palestinian camps.

So how do we deal with all of these pieces where the brain drain from Lebanon – all the great Lebanese have mostly left, so you have a diaspor in waiting who’s saying. I’ll come back but I want transparency, I want consistency, I want a legal system that makes sense, I want a banking system – what’s going to happen with the banking system? You have $100 billion of debt, and the elitists are saying, “Well, I don’t want to take the hit as a shareholder,” and the depositors saying, “We can’t take the hit, we’ve already lost our money,” and the central bank says, “I have no money.” They’ve got to get with it.

QUESTION: Thank you very much, Ambassador. I’m Serife Cetin from Anadolu Agency. Thank you for the opportunity. I know it’s come up with other questions, but you haven’t really elaborated or fully commented. I want to know, for you, do you think – what do you think that – the outcomes of the PKK announcing that it’s laid down its arms today? And in your view, to what extent do you think the so-called SDF is influenced by the PKK leadership and their cadres? Where do you think the two factions stand in terms of severing ties?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Since I’m not the favorite of either PKK or SDF these days, look, this has been – and it’s not just Türkiye, right? If you look at the Kurds in general from the very beginning, who are powerful, smart, ferocious warriors; have a culture that’s not really communistic but it’s communal – I mean, it’s a very interesting culture, right? Men and women are equal, more tribal than just a normal family operation, the way decisions are made is totally communal. And it had the past agony of thinking in that famous 1919 era that they were going to have Kurdistan, and like everybody else, it was stripped away from them in this – in these secret agreements of Sykes-Picot and the other things that happened out of the San Remo Agreement and on and on.

So they’ve been frustrated, rightly frustrated. So we have war – I mean, 40,000 deaths – between – even between PKK and the Turks. It’s a nightmare. So coming back, and Ocalan in exile coming back, and PKK making the generous statement of saying okay, we’re going to take the first step. We’re going to do this and then we want inclusion. We need our own culture, we need our own language. But the educational system, the legal system, the opportunities, we need to be included.

SDF a little bit different, right? Spun off, had their own decision-making ability, have been tucked under the wing of OIR, of the U.S. military. We owe a great debt of gratitude. They’ve been ferocious fighters. They helped us in the D-ISIS – all of us in the D-ISIS process. They deserve to have a future and a life. They have to decide: Are they Syrians? Are they Turks? Are they Kurds first? It’s an issue.

So it’s not our issue. They can decide whatever they want. We’re not forcing them to decide anything. We’re trying to provide a runway and saying you’re going to have a clear path and you’re all going to have to make decisions as to how you integrate, but there’s going to be one country. There’s not going to be six countries. Why? Because that’s what the Syrian Government is saying. That’s not what America is saying. That’s not what Russia is saying. That’s not what China is saying. That’s what Syria is saying, is we’re now a nation-state. HTS is gone. The Assad regime is gone. We’re now the Syrian Arab Republic. That’s a recognized nation-state. If you want to be part of it, here’s the conditions to come in.

So we’re trying to navigate that. I think everybody is actually being responsible. We’re trying to push and shove and force everybody to a conclusion, and sometimes that gets round around the edges. But I think it’s going to happen. I think the reasonableness of everybody in hope saying it’s time. Because where does it go?

So my hope is they integrate and all of this starts dissipating. And Türkiye, which has been our greatest NATO Ally – but again, all of these factions have to live within a nation-state. We’re facing the same thing at home, right? You look at the division in the country sometimes and you say, whoa, it’s getting gnarly. And the divisions in point of view of what’s happening in our support of Ukraine and Russia, and our support of Gaza and Israel, and what’s happening in Brazil, what’s happening with China and Taiwan. It has to be a new fabric, and I think that our President has taken the right road in saying America as the security guarantor for the world does not work. We’re there. We’ll help. We’ll usher. But we are not the security guarantor for the world.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Yes, here, and then Manik, we’ll do you after.

QUESTION: Okay. Thank you so much, Ambassador. Dilek Kaya, IHLAS News Agency. My first question: What is the latest development on F-35s for Türkiye? And second question: What are the latest developments regarding the ceasefire between Israel and Palestine?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: Good questions. So the F-35, so if you recall, so Türkiye is next to us the largest participant in NATO. So F-16s – and F-16s have a whole series of mods. So this story goes back to 2016, because we talk about all of the military equipment for Türkiye. So let me – let me go back because you were probably a baby in 2016.

So there was a coup. And President Erdogan, the thing that he fears more than anything are these coups, because of course in Türkiye what ran the government for so many years was the military. So you could have presidents come and go, you could have prime ministers come and go, but what they defaulted back to all the time was the military. So this coup in 2016 freaked everybody out.

So at that time, he wanted to buy Patriot missiles. Now, whether – how much of this is the exact fact or how much is of an interpretation, I’m giving you the interpretation of how this story started. And Congress at that time did not want to sell him Patriot missiles. What did he want the missiles for is to protect internally from these coups.

So they bought a Russian defense system called the S-400, and the S-400 is a very sophisticated detection system bought from the Russians by a NATO Ally. Confusing. So Congress came back and said, uh-uh, you can’t do that. And by the way, with the F-35s, they were making F-35 fuselages at the same – at that time. So F-35 was a consolidation of pieces and parts with a very sophisticated fifth-generation cycle of avionics. Congress got upset. They imposed CAATSA and another set of sanctions on them and said, for your defense-buying entity, we’re not going to sell you F-35s and we’re going to discontinue the F-16s and the F-16 mods.

Now, as sanctions go, what happens is Türkiye – being so smart and having a bright and industrious community – started manufacturing drones themselves and their own jets. The drones, by the way, end up being – the TB2s, the Bayraktar drones, are probably the best drones in the world, utilized in the Ukraine war. And we’ve frozen our defense process, including the manufacture of F-16s and F-35s and Patriot missiles – by the way, you can’t buy a Patriot missile. You can’t buy an F-16, right? We’re selling arms all over the world, and we’re at a deficit.

So we came back and said, okay, now we have a very good relationship. President Trump and President Erdogan have done a fantastic job of clawing back to each other and redefining the relationship that was left empty – and I don’t mean this as a political comment. But during the Biden administration and the Obama administrations, Türkiye was not loved and felt not loved. They were also not loved by the European community because they’re the second largest provider in NATO, but the European Union would not accept them even though they trade 40 or 50 percent of their goods with each other. So Congress said, “Uh-uh, naughty boys. You’ve got – you have to get rid of the S-400s. If you get rid of the S-400s” – by the way, they had already paid for part of the F-16s and they were making the F-35s. So this has been a long story for almost a decade coming to an end.

What is that end? A negotiation and a discussion of saying how can we turn back on that clock, F-35s being something that Congress has to look at and approve in its entirety separate from CAATSA with the F-16s, only because the F-35s have a very sophisticated detection system and a much longer range. So those discussions are going on simultaneously with all the other discussions.

So you have the F-35, you have the F-16, you have the F-16 mods, you have the S-400, you have Patriot missiles, and you have all of these other issues at a time where Türkiye’s economy is suffering and needs the bolstering of all of these other things. But it’s happening in real time. They’re being amazingly cooperative. They’ve really helped us on the Ukraine and Russia conversations. They’ve actually really helped us in having a point of conversation with Hamas, although they get criticized for it, just like the Qataris. The Qataris – Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman has been amazing, as has the Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan of Türkiye. Otherwise, we have no dialogue.

So I’m hopeful – all of this is moving. People – they’re all talking. And honestly, Israel, except for Gaza – and our hope is – Steve Witkoff is amazing. He’s dedicated his life to trying to find a path on behalf of the President and Secretary Rubio, and I think they’re getting towards the tail end of it. So I hope – my naive expectation is if that gets done, then we’re going to have a new alignment for a while in the Middle East. And if you can move to this peace and prosperity that we got to through power – the President sending those B-2 bombers was something, right? No matter how you look at it, it was something and got everybody’s attention. So while they have everybody’s attention, they say, “Okay, kids come on. Let’s play nicer in the play box.” Because there is no Plan B. I ask everybody. I say, “So you don’t like what we’re doing. Give me Plan B. We’ll take it to the President. He’s a very open guy. Just give me Plan B. What’s Plan B?” There is no Plan B.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MODERATOR: We need to move on.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: He’ll tell you that when he’s ready to tell you.

MODERATOR: We have time for one more question. (Inaudible.)

QUESTION: My name is Manik Mehta. I’m a syndicated journalist. Thank you for that very – for those very interesting insights. However, I do have a question in regard to the alignment of Turkish position with that of the U.S. in regard to Syria as well as Iran. And how does – how do the Turks look at the recent bombings by the Houthis in the Red Sea, attacks of ship – on ships in the Red Sea?

AMBASSADOR BARRACK: So I can’t tell you – the answer to your last question is I can tell you generally they don’t love it. They’re not Houthi fans, but I can’t give you the official answer of how they view that. But going back to what is the nature of the relationship, if you look and say you basically have eight countries and four seas that surround Türkiye, it’s easy for America that’s in North America surrounded by seas, protected by seas. We have two major bodies that we’re dealing with – Canada, and Central and Latin America. We can control those borders kind of, right? We’re trying to do a better job.

Türkiye is in the center of the world. And by the way, it’s dealing and trading with everybody. That was the – where East meets West with the Bosphorus and Dardanelles; with the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Spice Road – everything comes through there. So forget about the Ottoman Empire.

If we take a step forward, we have 13,000 Iranians a day that come across the Turkish border – 13,000 without a visa. Iranians. Türkiye is our combatant partner against ISIS. Türkiye with Armenia still suffers under the old impression of what Türkiye had done to Armenia, in genocide, but Azerbaijan and Türkiye and Armenia are the trading partner on that side as Syria is on this side.

By the way, now Türkiye has four and a half million Syrians that now speak Turkish and Arabic, so when that border opens up – when we get things under control – it’s going to rock. The Syrians are on fire. They’re the best traders in the – well, Syrians and the Lebanese – if you’ve got the Syrians, the Lebanese, and the Israelis together, forget it, right? With the Gulf money and that ingenuity, you’ll see everything start moving east.

So the relationship with Türkiye has been difficult because the Western standards that we have applied over time don’t really apply in the midst of this redefinition of a spice road in a primarily Islamic environment. But you have an Islamic environment that’s a republic, and across the Gulf you have Islamic environments that are monarchies.

Who wins in this contest for the hearts and minds of 2 billion Muslims, against 2 million Jews? This is where we all need to go. What is the endgame? How do you end it all? Does anybody want it to end? Do the neocons want it to end? We’re spending three and a half trillion dollars a year in military equipment. Is that a small business? Who are the business interests involved in it? Who are the disruptors?

How do we get there? Through education slowly, right? Through the largesse of an American system that’s understanding, that’s charitable, that’s not dictating. And as an example of all the things that we hope – and this President has done a good job of establishing that in the world today. It’s a complicated ZIP code. It’s day by day, and I think you win souls one soul at a time. And Türkiye is in the middle of all of it, just like Azerbaijan and Armenia. They’re arguing over 32 kilometers of road, but this is no joke. It’s been going on for a decade – 32 kilometers of road.

So what happens is America comes in and says, “Okay, we’ll take it over. Give us the 32 kilometers of road on a hundred-year lease, and you can all share it.” But these tribal points of view do not fade. We came into a – e pluribus unum. What does that mean? It means give up the masses for one. It exists in America. It doesn’t exist there. It’s individual, family, tribe, and then the nation. But my hope is over time this e pluribus unum will catch on and we can convert from Latin to Arabic, from Arabic to Russian, from Russian to China – maybe we have a shot.

MODERATOR: Well, thank you. That concludes our program today. Sir, thank you so much for being here. It’s an honor. To those of you who are interested, this transcript will be available on our website as soon as we get that cleared and the transcripts are done with that. It’s at fpc.state.gov. So, again, thank you so much, and we look forward to seeing you next time.

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[1] Url: https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/strengthening-us-turkiye-relations-and-advancing-relations-with-syria

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