FM Hakan Fidan says it is only a matter of time before YPG is eliminated’ in Syria and urges the West to cease supporting the group.
The foreign minister of Turkiye said it would be only a matter of time before Kurdish-led armed groups in Syria would be wiped out. Ankara would never agree to a situation where an armed group named YPG may stay there when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaves.
Turkey views the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the primary component of the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – as a “terrorist” organization affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The situation in Syria has changed. We believe that it is a matter of time before PKK/YPG is eradicated,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said at a news conference in the capital, Ankara, on Monday. Fidan warned against any Western support for Kurdish-led groups in Syria.
“If you [the West] have different aims in the region, if you want to serve another policy by using Daesh as an excuse to embolden the PKK, then there is no way for that, either,” he said, using an Arabic name for the ISIL (also known as ISIS) group.
But Washington has long viewed the SDF, which led the battle against ISIL in 2019 and runs jails and camps housing the group’s fighters, as essential to stopping the group from re-emerging.
New Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group has long been allied with Turkiye, told Al Arabiya TV on Sunday that the Kurdish-led forces should be incorporated into the national army.
