Turkey calls for unconditional US support against Kurdish YPG

Following the auto bomb attack on a military convoy in Ankara this week which left 28 people dead, a breakaway faction of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the attack, and Turkey has vowed to intensify its fight against the Kurds both at home and in Syria.

The Turkish government has dismissed the claim, saying TAK is shielding the worldwide reputation of the Syrian Kurdish fighters, who Washington is backing in the fight against Islamic State. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had identified the bomber as Syrian national Salih Neccar and said he was a member of the Syrian Kurdish militia group People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

Turkey has been bombing Syria’s northern territory since February 13 in order to stop the advances of Kurdish groups fighting Takfiri militants in the region. But Turkey has recently pressed the US on its support for the YPG and has even suggested the Americans choose between its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally and a group Ankara considers a terrorist outfit.

Kalin said that Ankara has “rightly reacted” to continued United States support to the YPG, without elaborating further.

In his remarks Saturday, Erdogan noted: “Nobody can limit Turkey in using its right of self-defense against terror attacks targeting the country”. It said the attack was in retaliation to the military’s stepped up operations against the PKK.

At a press conference in Iranian capital Tehran on Monday, Anadolu Agency’s reporter asked the question: “Does Iran formally accept YPG as a terrorist organization?”. It said he had joined the PKK in 2005 and was based a PKK camp in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountains from then to 2014.

Also Tuesday, police detained three more people suspected of involvement in the bombing, Anadolu said. Obama also offered his condolences for deadly terrorist attack in Turkey, it said.

The comments came after calls from Damascus and several other states across the globe on Turkey to end its shelling of Kurdish targets in Syria.

“The Kremlin is concerned by the growing tension on the Syrian-Turkish border”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with journalists in Moscow on Saturday.