Trump spoke to Turkish president Tayyip Erdoğan

In October 2019, after Trump spoke to Turkish president Tayyip Erdoğan, the White House acknowledged that Turkey would be carrying out a planned military offensive into northern Syria; as such, U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the area to avoid interference with that operation. The statement also passed responsibility for the area's captured ISIS fighters to Turkey. In the following days, Trump suggested that the Kurds intentionally released ISIS prisoners in order to gain sympathy, suggested that they were fighting only for their own financial interests, suggested that some of them were worse than ISIS, and termed them "no angels".