Turkey denies agreeing to truce with Kurdish militia
KARKAMIS (Turkey) — Turkey will not agree a truce with Kurdish militias in Syria as it considers them terrorists, officials said on Wednesday, after strains emerged with the United States over clashes between Turkish forces and the US-backed Syrian fighters.
Washington has been alarmed by Turkey’s week-long incursion into Syria, saying it was “unacceptable” for its Nato ally to hit militias loyal to Kurdish-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that Washington supports to fight against Daesh.
US officials on Tuesday welcomed what appeared to be a pause in fighting between Turkish forces and rival militias, although Ankara denied assertions from Kurdish fighters in Syria that a temporary truce had been agreed.
“The Turkish Republic is a sovereign state, a legitimate state. It cannot be equated with a terrorist organisation,” EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik told state-run Anadolu news agency, adding this meant there could be no “agreement between the two.” His comments were echoed by President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, who said Turkey would continue striking Kurdish militia until they withdrew from the region where Turkish forces are fighting.
Turkey’s aim was to drive Daesh out of a 90 kilometre stretch of Syrian territory running along the border, Kalin said. Turkey has long said it wants a “buffer zone” in the area, although it has not used the term during this incursion.
After days when the border area reverberated with warplanes roaring overhead into Syria and artillery pounded Syrian sites, only the occasional thud of explosions in the distance was audible from the Turkish frontier town of Karkamis on Wednesday.
Karkamis lies just across the border from the northern Syrian town of Jarablus, which was swiftly captured from Daesh by Turkishbacked forces when they launched the offensive dubbed “Euphrates Shield” on Aug. 24.
Since then, the Turkish army with its allies have pushed further south, seizing a string of villages in areas controlled by militias loyal to the Kurdish-backed SDF, which drove Daesh out of the city of Manbij this month with United States help.
Turkey, which is battling a decades-long Kurdish insurgency at home, fears Kurdish-aligned forces will capture areas previously held by Daesh, giving them control of an unbroken swathe of territory running along the Turkish border.
Since the start of the campaign, the Turkish army has said it has bombarded dozens of targets that it says were held by the Kurdish YPG militia, a powerful force in the SDF. The YPG says its forces withdrew from the area long before Turkey’s assault.