Turkey had previously warned that it would continue bombarding the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara sees as a terror organization linked to separatist rebels, unless they moved east.
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Turkey sent tanks and jets into Syria last week to help Syrian rebels take Jarablus and also to curtail advances by Syrian Kurdish forces.
Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish force an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a domestic group that Ankara has declared a terrorist organization. Turkey says the group is an arm of Turkey’s outlawed PKK.
“Nobody can expect us to allow a terror corridor on our southern border”, Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference, after the USA criticized Turkey for attacking the YPG, a Syrian group Washington has backed.
On Tuesday, the Kurdish-backed Jarablus Military Council said it had agreed to a cease-fire with the Turkish military in a disputed area in northern Syria after lengthy consultations with the anti-IS coalition.
In comments made to the state-run Anadolu news agency on Wednesday, EU Minister Omer Celik says, “Turkey is a sovereign state, it is a legitimate state”. Washington has appealed on both Ankara and Syrian Kurds to stop fighting each other.
Kalin said Turkey will keep attacking the Syrian Kurdish militia unless they fully withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River.
“Turkey’s claims that it is fighting the YPG west of the Euphrates have no basis in truth and are merely flimsy pretexts to widen its occupation of Syrian land“, Redur Xelil, chief spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, told Reuters.
He added that Erdogan is now engaged in a diplomatic push to secure a broader cease-fire in Syria during the upcoming three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which would allow aid to reach the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. He says Erdogan will hold discussions on the issue during the G-20 summit in China.
Turkey on Wednesday denied a U.S. claim it had agreed a truce with the Kurdish militia but the Turkish-backed fighters confirmed there was at least a lull in the fighting.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu informed his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov about military operations in Syria during a phone conversation, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a message August 31.
Meanwhile, spokesman for the Kurds in Syria, Saleh Moslem of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), addressed a conference in Brussels, Belgium this week titled “The Urgent Situation in Northern Syria, Turkish Invasion, Europe’s Security and An Alternative to the Turkey Deal” and explained that Turkey’s attacks are nothing new and that they have “been attacking Rojava and Kurdish interests for years”.
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Vice President Joe Biden said last week during a visit to Turkey that the Kurdish forces must withdraw or risk losing US support.
