Erdogan urges USA to stop aiding Syrian Kurds

The military action in the region, which is controlled by Kurdish militias believed by Ankara to be terrorists, began on Saturday with massive airstrikes followed by a ground offensive.

On Dec. 17, Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told Anadolu Agency that the us will recoup every weapon from the YPG/PKK that could threaten Turkey.

“With the Olive Branch operation, we have once again thwarted the game of those sneaky forces whose interests in the region are different”. The Syrian Kurdish group is a main part of a US -backed rebel alliance that has inflicted recent defeats on Islamic State militants.

Donald Trump on Wednesday chewed out Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call, just days after Turkey bombed USA -backed Kurdish fighters in Syria.

They said the “aim of this (Turkish) aggression is to cut more Syrian land by occupying Afrin”. “In Afrin, Turkey knowingly targets civilian buildings such as hospitals”. The group, which is trained and armed by the United States, is viewed by Ankara as a terrorist organization.

“We call on the Syrian state to carry out its sovereign obligations towards Afrin and protect its borders with Turkey from attacks of the Turkish occupier”, it said in a statement on its website.

Bossert meanwhile said it would be a “terrible outcome” if Turkish troops clashed with “the proxy forces that we have all been relying on to defeat ISIS, especially if there are USA advisers in the region”.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned his Turkish counterpart Wednesday to avoid any actions that might risk a confrontation between their forces, according to official White House statement.

However Turkey has disputed that characterisation of the conversation.

Yet it is evident that the first major victim of the Trump administration’s approach to Syria’s Kurds is the US-Turkey alliance.

The Turkish official sources said that President RecepTayyip Erdoğan also told Trump that the U.S.’ support to YPG terrorists must end as soon as possible, and Trump told that U.S.is now not supplying and will not supply any more weaponry to the YPG.

But he said the U.S.is watching that very closely and will try to prevent it.

The YPG have been armed by the United States as part of the broader fight against the so-called Islamic State.

In a clear sign of rapprochement, Ankara is buying an S-400 missile defense system from Russian Federation – unnerving North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials, who are already wary of Moscow’s military presence in the Middle East.

They appear to have made only limited progress, since rain and cloud have hampered air support.

Unsurprisingly, the Observatory’s reckoning of the deaths was that Turkish forces killed 28, while the Kurdish YPG and its allies killed two civilians.

Turkey is targeting the YPG, a Kurdish militia, who control much of north east Syria. But the US shouldn’t forget its friends, either, or these haunting casualty numbers: In the final decisive battle to take the Islamic State capital of Raqqa, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces suffered 650 deaths, Votel says.

Last week, Tillerman confirmed a US military presence in Syria, despite having largely already defeated ISIS there.

Turkey’s air and ground operation in Syria’s Afrin region, now in its fifth day, targets US -backed Kurdish YPG fighters, which Ankara sees as allies of Kurdish insurgents who have fought in southeastern Turkey for decades.

What’s happening now in Syria is that history is resuming, after the bloody distraction of the Islamic State.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who says the YPG is an extension of a Kurdish group waging a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey’s borders, has also pledged to drive Kurdish fighters out of the mainly Arab town of Manbij.

Preservation of the territorial integrity of Syria is the common goal of Ankara and Damascus and the Turkish troops are not going to attack government forces in Syria, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. They promised they would send the terrorists in this area to the east of the Euphrates and leave Manbij to its rightful owners.

They said Trump did not voice concerns about the violence or use the phrase “destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey”.