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President Donald Trumps plan to withdraw the U.S. from Syria fell into further disarray Tuesday after Turkeys leader rebuffed Trumps emissary, John Bolton, and angrily dismissed his demand that Turkey agree to protect Americas Kurdish allies.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Bolton had made a grave mistake in setting that condition for the pullout of troops. It is not possible for us to swallow the message Bolton gave from Israel, Erdogan said in Parliament, after refusing to meet with Bolton, the presidents national security adviser, during his visit to Turkey.

The failure of Boltons mission, which was intended to reassure allies that Trump would pull out of Syria in an orderly fashion, raised new questions about whether the United States would be able to come to terms with Turkey, a NATO partner, about how to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops who fought alongside the Kurds against the Islamic State.

It was the latest example of what has become a recurring motif in Trumps idiosyncratic, leader-to-leader foreign policy: a senior U.S. official humiliated by a foreign head of state who evidently calculated that he could extract a better deal by talking directly to Trump.

Erdogan was contemptuous of Boltons effort to flesh out a U.S. withdrawal that Trump broached in a phone call with Erdogan just before announcing it on Dec. 19.

The Turkish leader hailed Trump for making the right call in an opinion piece in The New York Times. He argued that Turkey, with the second-largest standing army in NATO, was the only country with the power and commitment to replace U.S. forces in northeastern Syria, fight terrorism and ensure stability for the Syrian people.

But Pentagon officials have voiced deep skepticism that Turkish forces have either the capacity or the will to carry out extensive counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State. They also warn that any Turkish incursions into northeastern Syria would lead to clashes with the Syrian Kurdish-Arab coalition allied with the United States.

In Jerusalem, before he traveled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, Bolton pledged that U.S. forces would remain in Syria until the Islamic State was fully defeated, setting the stage for a more gradual withdrawal than the one Trump heralded. He also demanded guarantees that Turkey would not attack Kurdish forces allied with the Americans.

We dont think the Turks ought to undertake military action thats not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States, at a minimum so they dont endanger our troops, Bolton told reporters.

Once in Ankara, he also protested to Turkish officials about Erdogans Times piece. In it, the Turkish president wrote that the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State had carried out airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, that showed little or no regard for civilian casualties something he said Turkish troops had avoided in their counterterrorism operations.

Aides to Bolton insisted he did not feel snubbed by Erdogan. The U.S. Embassy in Turkey requested a series of meetings, but due to scheduling conflicts one with President Erdogan was never confirmed, a spokesman for Bolton, Garrett Marquis, said in a statement.

Erdogan said there was no need for a meeting, since he was busy and Bolton had met with his Turkish counterpart, Ibrahim Kalin, anyway. But he said he was now likely to call Trump.

Turkeys main motive for supporting a withdrawal of U.S. forces is that it would end support for the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey regards as a terrorist group, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the Ankara director for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. It would also eliminate the prospect of a Kurdish-run autonomous territory in northern Syria, which Turkey regards as a threat to its own stability.

The YPG is widely seen as the Syrian franchise of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, which has been fighting an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and is designated as a terrorist organization by that country, the United States and the European Union.

Turkey supports rebels fighting the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad but opposes groups it considers to be terrorists, including the YPG and the Islamic State.

The Trump administration would like Turkey to agree not to move against the YPG in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. But Unluhisarcikli called that a hopeless cause, adding, It is not a question of whether. Turkey will not tolerate the PKK on its borders. So it is only a matter of time.

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