“Time and again they came up with excuses such as a lack of military capabilities to make it impossible for the government to move forward”.
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Turkey’s stance has put it at odds with Washington, which sees the YPG as a rare reliable ally on the ground in Syria, where Washington is trying to defeat Islamic State while also opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s government in a complex, multi-sided, five-year-old civil war.
Kalın noted that Jarablus has successfully been cleansed of all Daesh elements and that Turkey intends to keep it that way and will not tolerate seeing any terrorist groups on its borders.
At a joint press conference, Biden reportedly said that the YPG would lose USA support if it does not withdraw to the eastern side of Euphrates River.
At least 10 more tanks have moved across the border into Syria since the Jarablus operation.
The meeting with Barzani, then, at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s request, is an indication of Turkish support for an independent Kurdish republic in Iraq that openly rejects the Syrian Kurdish militias, the YPG and YPJ, and opposes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist terrorist organization long at war with the Turkish government. Kurdish allies say otherwise. Ankara’s hostility to the YPG puts it at loggerheads with the USA, which works with the group on the ground in the fight against Isis.
Officials in the capital Ankara fear that if Kurds manage to break away from northern Syria, that will ignite separatist demands in Turkey even more.
“We are in a very serious situation. evidences of crimes have been provided”, he said in a speech in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, near Paris. Many analysts say the distinction is not as clear as Washington might hope. It is one of the most powerful militias in Syria and regarded as the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed alliance formed last October to fight the jihadist group. The offensive was launched in coordination with the so-called US-led military coalition purportedly fighting Daesh.
The SDF had previously advanced to within a mile of Jarablus after driving Isis out of swathes of northern Syria in recent months, including the key city of Manbij. They had then set their sights on Jarablus, around 20 miles north. As Turkish special forces conducted reconnaissance on the territory of Syria, Turkish tanks and heavy artillery were moved to the border areas.
Abdulkadir Selvi, a columnist for the Hürriyet newspaper, said the aims of the operation included creating a security zone free of terror groups and limiting the advances of Kurdish militia.
But they withdrew from some areas on Thursday as part of a deal confirmed by the American Vice President, Joe Biden, to assuage Turkey.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Thursday that Syrian Kurdish forces have begun withdrawing to the east of the Euphrates River, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
The official reason for the intervention, as stated by the Turkish authorities, was the need to struggle against ISIS terrorism and Kurdish separatism, and to secure a unified Syria. “We are now planning not to confront them, but if we have to confront them, we will”, Osman said. “So for these two reasons I think the tensions in Turkish-US relations are going to remain for the foreseeable future”. Turkey’s primary objection right now is Manbij, which the United States helped the Kurds capture, and which is on the western side of the Euphrates River. “The PYD and the YPG militia should not replace Islamic State there”, Isik told Turkish broadcaster NTV.
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Soon, Turkish tanks could share a front line with emboldened Kurdish fighters, raising the possibility of a violent flare-up between the two.
