Ankara has repeatedly insisted that the Kurdish YPG militia must end and called on the US to stop supporting it.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that Kurdish fighters in Syria will lay down their weapons or be “buried”, amid the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and other armed groups since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. fell at the beginning of this month. .
Following al-Assad's ouster on December 8, Ankara has repeatedly insisted that the Kurdish YPG militia must be disbanded, saying the group has no place. The future of Syria.
Syria's leadership transition has left the country's main Kurdish groups behind.
“Separatist killers will say goodbye to their weapons, or they will be buried in Syrian lands with their weapons,” Erdogan told lawmakers from his AK Party in parliament on Wednesday.
“We will end the terrorist group that wants to weave blood between us and our Kurdish brothers,” he added.
Turkey sees the YPG – a major part of the United States-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). they rebelled against the government against Turkey since 1984.
The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union. Ankara is repeated calls on NATO ally Washington and others to stop supporting the YPG.
Al Jazeera's Sinem Koseoglu, who is based in Istanbul, said that this is not surprising with Erdogan's statement “since it is the official statement of the Turkish government”.
Since the YPG is considered “the Syrian branch of the PKK, Ankara believes that they must lay down arms, or they must fight and they will be defeated,” Koseoglu said.
Earlier, the Turkish Defense Ministry said the army had killed 21 YPG-PKK terrorists in northern Syria and Iraq.
SDF leader Mazloum Abdi admitted last week the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying that they helped fight ISIL (also known as ISIS) and will return home if they cooperate with Turkiye, a priority for Ankara. .
He denied any cooperation with the PKK.
Erdogan also said that Turkey would open its embassy in Aleppo, adding that Ankara expects traffic on its border next summer as some of the millions of Syrian refugees it hosts begin to return home.