Turkey is ready to take over security in Syria’s Manbij, where four US citizens died in an Islamic State-claimed bombing last week, President Tayyip Erdogan told US President Donald Trump in a telephone call on Sunday, the Turkish presidency said. Erdogan told Trump that the suicide bombing in Manbij, a town in northeast Syria controlled by a militia allied to US-backed Kurdish forces, was a provocative act aimed at affecting Trump’s decision last month to withdraw US troops from Syria. Trump confounded his own national security team with a surprise decision on Dec. 19 to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria, declaring the Islamic State militant group had been defeated there, a view not shared by many experts. Manbij, which US-backed forces captured from Islamic State in 2016, has emerged as a focal point of tensions after Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces whose presence has effectively deterred Turkey from attacking Kurdish forces. Manbij is controlled by US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a militia allied to the US-backed Kurdish YPG. Ankara views the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has for decades waged a separatist insurgency in Turkey. Published in Daily Times, January 22nd 2019.