Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused the US of forming a "terror army" after Washington announced plans for a 30,000-strong force inside Syria to protect territory held by its mainly Kurdish allies.
Erdoğan threatened to thwart the creation of a U.S-backed 30,000-strong border security force manned mostly by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria.
"The operation may start any moment. Operations into other regions will come after," he said, noting that the Turkish army was already hitting YPG positions.
On Saturday, the Defense Post news website published an article, in which the spokesman of the 'US-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State' (IS) terrorist group, said that the coalition was engaged in training of a 30,000-strong force on the territory within Syria currently controlled by SDF to maintain security in controlled area along the Syrian border.
The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish YPG, and the plan for the force dashes Turkish hopes that the US would abandon the YPG once the war against Islamic State came to an end. Turkey regards the Kurdish YPG militia as indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) operating inside Turkey, which it regards as a terror group.
"A country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror army on our borders,” Erdoğan said. "What can that terror army target but Turkey? Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even born."
FOREIGN MINISTRY CONDEMNS THE PLAN
Turkey condemns the plans of the United States to create the so-called Border Security Force (BSF) on the Syrian territory controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militant, given the absence of consultations with Ankara, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Monday in a statement.
"The coalition did not hold consultations with Turkey about the creation of [these] forces, and it is unknown what coalition members made this decision. Unilateral steps, which are presented as actions of the coalition, is a seriously wrong action that will be detrimental to the fight against IS," the statement reads.
"Continued US cooperation with the YPG [US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units], which is contrary to its [the US’s] own obligations, jeopardize our national security and territorial integrity of Syria, and that is unacceptable. We condemn the persistence of the United States in this erroneous approach, and once again remind that Turkey is determined to eliminate any threats against it, and has all possibilities to do this," the Turkish Foreign Ministry stressed.
Russia also opposed the plan, saying it could lead to the partitioning of Syria. For its part, the Syrian regime vowed to win back control of the entire country, including by removing any form of US-backed Syrian Kurdish force. The US plan was a blatant attack on Syrian sovereignty, Syria said.
