Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz accused Russian forces and the Bashar al-Assad regime of using the human tragedy in Syria as a weapon against Turkey and Europe.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier withdrew her support for the move after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov warned that it would need the consent of both the Syrian government and the United Nations security council.
Turkey regards the YPG and its umbrella group the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as an ally of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
Attacks follow days after an agreement made last week in Munich between Russian Federation and other world powers to limit the cessation of hostilities in Syria by the end of this week. The United States is conducting airstrikes in Syria against suspected Islamic State targets. A hospital in southern Syria supported by Doctors Without Borders was bombed last week, allegedly by Russian airstrikes, killing at least three people.
“If Russia continues behaving like a terrorist organisation and forcing civilians to flee, we will deliver an extremely decisive response”, he said.
“We discussed the priority issue for us at the moment, which is the issue of humanitarian access to besieged areas”, de Mistura said.
The head of the PYD has denied that his group carried out the attack in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Wednesday, saying it did not consider the Turkish state as an enemy.
Turkey, alarmed by the Kurdish gains, has since Saturday bombarded Kurdish positions across the border in Syria.
The Syrian Kurdish militia has not explained the aim of its latest advance but a source told Reuters on January 28 it planned to seize the stretch of border held by Islamic State east of Azaz – the only part of the frontier still in the hands of the jihadist group.
He also noted that the U.S.is aware that the YPG – the armed wing of the terrorist PKK’s Syrian affiliate PYD – is now taking additional territory outside of Afrin, including areas close to Azaz and the Manakh Air Base in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. While urging the Syrian Kurds not to “take advantage of a confused situation”, Kirby imploredTurkey to “cease” firing across the border.
On Sunday, the Syrian government had said Turkish forces were among 100 gunmen who had entered Syria accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents.
Buildings which were damaged during the security operations and clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants, are pictured in Sur district of Diyarbakir, Turkey February 11, 2016. The two conflicts, long separate, have begun to converge in the area between Aleppo and the border.
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Sunni Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said this month they were ready to send ground forces as part of an worldwide coalition against Islamic State, providing Washington takes the lead. A unilateral action by the two Sunni Muslim countries would likely exacerbate the increasingly sectarian nature of the civil war.
