ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said there was no place for “terrorist organizations” in Syria under its new Islamist leaders, in a warning regarding Kurdish forces there.
The fall of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad last month raised the prospect of Türkiye intervening 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.
Erdogan told Barzani that Türkiye was working to prevent the ousting of Assad in neighboring Syria from causing new instability in the region.
There is no place for “terrorist organizations 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 Türkiye.
The PKK has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is banned as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.
The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighboring Iraq, accusing them of PKK links.
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 Türkiye, for the Kurdish-led forces to be integrated into Syria’s national army.
The US 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.”