German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday strongly criticised the Turkish military offensive against Kurdish militants in their Syrian stronghold of Afrin. "Despite all the legitimate security interests Turkey has, it is unacceptable what is happening in Afrin, where thousands and thousands of civilians are being persecuted, dying or forced to flee," she told parliament. "We also condemn that in the strongest terms."
The People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia, was driven out of Afrin on Sunday, one the cantons in the self-proclaimed autonomous administration run by Syria's Kurds. Turkey considers the YPG "terrorists" allied with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.
But Washington and the anti-Islamic State international coalition have backed the YPG to spearhead its effort to oust IS jihadists from Syria. In a wide-ranging speech on her new government's priorities, Merkel offered a full-throated defence of her decision to let in more than one million asylum seekers since 2015, many of them from war-ravaged Syria.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.