Ankara links the Syrian Kurdish movement with the PKK and considers both groups “terrorist”. Both the US and Turkey believe the resolution to Syria’s five-year-long civil war lies in removing the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, from power.
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A central strategy of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey, has been to attack military targets, although it has largely focused on the mainly Kurdish southeast.
An Arab-Kurdish alliance dominated by the YPG has made significant advances against IS and other insurgents near the Turkish border in the past week.
Turkey said the capture of Azaz by the YPG would be a “red line” and has vowed not to let it fall into Kurdish hands.
He was born in 1992 in the mostly Kurdish Syrian town of Amouda, near the Turkish border, Davutoglu said.
Erdogan said 14 people had been detained in nationwide raids across Turkey and that the number was likely to rise. “But it could be an act of retaliation for the massacres in Kurdistan”, Bayık was quoted as saying by the Fırat news agency, seen as close to the PKK. The Turkish military has been a frequent target of the militants.
He insisted that the faction is a terrorist group.
“Our determination to respond in kind against such attacks against our unity and future from outside and inside is even more strengthened through such attacks”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement.
He said: “A direct link between the attack and the YPG has been established”.
“We can, if necessary, take the same measures in Syria as we took in Iraq and Qandil”, he said in a televised speech.
The Turkish prime minister called on the U.S. and other allies to end cooperation with the YPG in Syria and list it as a terrorist group.
The EU leaders also welcomed the “willingness of some member states to participate in a voluntary humanitarian admission programme with Turkey”. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the issue. However, as a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, Ankara has given its allies – including the USA – permission to use the Incirlik Air Base to strike IS, which is fighting the Syrian government. A fragile peace process with the Kurdish rebels collapsed in the summer.
Turkey said a separate attack by PKK militants in the country’s southeast killed six soldiers. The US, a key Turkish ally, has supported the Syrian Kurds in its battles against the Islamic State group in Syria. “Turkey reserves the right to take any measure against the Syrian regime”.
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The head of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) on Thursday denied Turkish allegations that the group was involved in a bombing in Ankara that killed 28 people. The claim could not be verified.
