ISTANBUL: Turkey’s president slammed a US-backed Syrian Kurdish militant group Sunday and said he’ll clear his country’s border with Syria of “terrorists.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a rally in the central province of Karaman his country would not allow “terror nests” near its border, referring to areas held by the People’s Protection Units or YPG in northern Syria.
Turkey considers the YPG an extension of a Kurdish insurgency within its own borders, and launched an operation in August 2016 to clear part of its border of their and the Daesh group’s presence.
Erdogan announced an expanded list of areas to be cleared. “We will clean Afrin of terrorists, we will clean Manbij of terrorists. We will clean Tel Abyad, Ras Al-Ayn and Qamishli of terrorists,” he said.
Turkey has a military presence in the western Syrian province of Idlib as part of a de-escalation agreement struck with Russia and Iran. The province borders YPG-controlled Afrin and Turkey has threatened to attack the group there.
Erdogan has frequently expressed frustration with the Syrian Kurdish militant group’s presence at Turkey’s border. But it’s rare that he mentions Qamishli, a town further east controlled by both the Syrian Kurds and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.
Turkish officials regularly criticize the US for backing and arming Syrian Kurds in combatting IS, a sticky issue in already tense bilateral relations.
Last month, Turkey’s foreign minister said President Donald Trump promised to stop arming the militant group but the Pentagon said it was reviewing the process, stopping short of announcing a halt to weapons transfers.
Erdogan chided the NATO member’s allies, saying they “will really be our allies when they stop working with structures we consider terror organizations in Syria.”
Erdogan says Turkey will clear border of Syrian Kurds
Erdogan says Turkey will clear border of Syrian Kurds
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
