For almost two decades now, there have been debates about a conflict between China and the U.S. People from different fields, including hawkish foreign policy experts, realist international relations scholars and some journalists, have written about this “eventuality.”

Since the recent phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Donald Trump last Sunday, we have seen that the major issue to debate has become the U.S. decision to withdraw from Syria. The intensity of objections to U.S. withdrawal from the area and the U.S. "green light" for Turkey's operation raised several questions about the arguments and rationale behind such criticism.