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Syria crisis tests Trump’s global religious freedom vows

The Turkish invasion of northern Syria in the wake of President Donald Trump’s troop withdrawal from the region could put to the test Trump’s stated commitment to global freedom of worship for religious minorities.

The fighting between the Turks and Kurds has raised fears for the safety of Syrian Christians, Yazidis and other minority faiths at the hands of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mostly Muslim forces.

At the same time the crisis is unfolding, the Trump administration is proposing to drastically reduce the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. to historic lows, cutting slots nearly 80% from their 2016 levels.

“We see this as a real mismatch. The Trump administration has reduced refugee resettlement slots at exactly the wrong time,” said Nazanin Ash, vice president for public policy at the International Rescue Committee, which resettles refugees.

As recently as last month, the president vowed to support international religious freedom around the world and rolled out plans at the United Nations for a $25 million investment in the cause.

But then he alarmed evangelical Christians and refugee advocates in the U.S. last week by withdrawing protection for America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria, opening them to attack by the Turks, who regard them as terrorists with aspirations for their own separatist state.

The invasion has unleashed a new humanitarian crisis, with at least 160,000 people driven from the homes, according to the United Nations, and has stirred fears of ethnic bloodletting against religious minorities in formerly Kurdish-controlled northern Syria.

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