U.S. trying to trick Turkey over weapons for Syrian Kurds, Erdogan says

U.S. trying to trick Turkey over weapons for Syrian Kurds, Erdogan says

Posted on June 26, 2017

ANKARA,— Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday countries which promised to get back weapons supplied to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, northern Syria, were trying to trick Turkey and would eventually realize their mistake.

Ankara was infuriated by a U.S. decision last month to arm the YPG, which Washington sees as a vital ally in the battle against Islamic State in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa but which Turkey deems an extension of the outlawed Kurdish PKK.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population.

Turkish defense ministry sources said on Thursday the United States had pledged that weapons provided to the YPG would be taken back once Islamic State was defeated.

However Erdogan, addressing members of his ruling AK Party in a speech marking the start of the Islamic Eid holiday, appeared to dismiss those assurances, saying Turkey’s friends and allies were cooperating with terrorists.

“The ones who think they are tricking Turkey by saying they are going to get back the weapons that are being given to this terrorist organization will realize that they are making a mistake eventually,” he said.

“But it will be too late for them,” he added, saying that if violence spilled over Syria’s border into Turkey, Ankara would hold to account anyone who supplied arms to the YPG.

“We will make the real owners of those weapons… pay for any bullet that will be fired to our country, for every drop of blood that will be shed,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump decided to arm the YPG fighters, who form a main part of the U.S.-backed force fighting Islamic State inside Raqqa, despite protests from NATO ally Ankara and a direct appeal from Erdogan at a White House meeting last month.

Erdogan said the decision contravened the military alliance’s framework of cooperation.

Faced with turmoil across its southern border, Turkey last year sent troops into Syria to support Syrian rebels fighting both Islamic State and Kurdish forces who control a large part of Syria’s northern border region.

“I want all the world to know that in northern Syria, on our border, we are never going to allow a terrorist state to be established,” Erdogan said.

Turkey fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria that will not be loyal to Ankara — would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds, analysts say.

U.S regards the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG, which is part of SDF alliance, as key ally against Islamic State and the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and has provided them with arms, air support as well as the military advisers.

The Kurdish YPG, which has 60,000 fighters, has seized swathes of Syria from IS.

Syrian Kurdistan’s ruling PYD has established three autonomous zones, or Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016 Syria’s Kurds declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan.

On August 24, 2016, Turkey and Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army FSA have launched an incursion into northern Syria, east of Afrin to stop the US-backed Kurdish YPG forces from extending areas under their control and connecting Syrian Kurdistan’s Kobani and Hasaka in the east with Afrin canton in the west and preventing them creating a de facto Kurdish mini-state along Turkey’s frontier

http://ekurd.net/erdogan-weapons-syrian-kurds-2017-06-26