ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said there was no place for “terrorist organisations” in Syria under its new Islamist leaders, in a warning over Kurdish forces there.
The fall of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad last month raised the prospect of Turkey intervening directly in the country against Kurdish forces accused by Ankara of links to armed separatists.
Erdogan’s comment came during a meeting in Ankara with the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdish region, Masrour Barzani, the Turkish leader’s office said in a statement.
Turkey’s Erdogan says ready to intervene to prevent any division of Syria
Erdogan told Barzani that Turkey was working to prevent the Assad ouster from causing new instability in the region.
There is no place for “terrorist organisations or affiliated elements in the future of the new Syria,” Erdogan said.
Ankara accuses one leading Kurdish force in Syria, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey.
The PKK has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is banned as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its Western allies.
In a televised address late on Tuesday, Erdogan warned again that “there’s no place for any kind of terrorism” in Turkey and beyond.
“We have begun to reap the fruits of our strategy of eliminating terrorism at its source, which we have been implementing for a while, both domestically and internationally,” he said.
“Now we continue this with new tools and new methods,” the Turkish leader said without elaborating.
The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, accusing them of PKK links.
Erdogan also said what he described as the “Syrian revolution” opened a “historic window of opportunity” for Turkey and the region.
On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said: “The elimination of the PKK/YPG is only a matter of time.”
He cited a call by Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose HTS group has long had ties with Turkey, for the Kurdish-led forces to be integrated into Syria’s national army.
The United States has backed the YPG in its fight against the jihadist movement Islamic State (IS), which has been largely crushed in its former Syrian stronghold.
But Fidan warned that Western countries should not use the threat of IS as “a pretext to strengthen the PKK”.
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