YPG heed Turkish warning and retreat
Washington says Syrian Kurdish fighters are east of the Euphrates river in a move it hopes will de-escalate tensions
ISTANBUL // US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria have “all” gone east of the Euphrates river, an American defence official said yesterday, a move Washington hoped would reduce conflict between two of its partner forces.
The United States said the development – a key demand from Ankara – had occurred over the past day or so.
“All the YPG ( Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units) are on the east of the Euphrates,” the official said, referring to the Kurdish militia that has worked closely with US advisers to fight ISIL. He acknowledged that some Kurds may remain to the west of the river, but said these were not part of the YPG.
The announcement came after Nato member Turkey warned yesterday that it would carry out more strikes on the YPG if it failed to retreat beyond the Euphrates.
Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in strikes on YPG positions on Sunday, a day after a Turkish soldier died in a rocket attack.
The Pentagon called the clashes unacceptable and urged an immediate de-escalation.
Turkey wants to prevent the YPG from joining up a region east of the Euphrates already under its control with a Kurdish-held area to the west.
Ankara fears the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would bolster Kurdish rebels across the border in south-east Turkey.
US vice president Joe Biden said last week that Washington had ordered the YPG to retreat or risk losing American support. But Ankara said earlier yesterday that it had seen no evidence of this.
“The YPG needs to cross east of the Euphrates as soon as possible. So long as they don’t, they will be a target,” said foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
He accused the group of “ethnic cleansing” in the mainly Arab area around the city of Manbij, west of the Euphrates, which the YPG wrested from ISIL earlier this month. Turkey accuses the YPG of being an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency on Turkish territory for more than three decades.
Also yesterday, the Turkish air force launched air strikes on PKK bases in northern Iraq.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said at least 40 civilians were killed in Turkish shelling and air strikes on pro-Kurdish positions in northern Syria on Sunday.
Ankara strongly denied that it had killed any civilians.
The army said yesterday that 10 more villages had “been cleared of terrorist elements” by Turkish-backed anti-regime Syrian fighters.
A 400- square- kilometre area has been cleared since the operation began last Wednesday, it said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the offensive would continue until “the threat of Daesh and YPG/PKK is over”.
Yesterday, at least five people were injured in the Turkish town of Kilis by rockets fired across the border from an ISIL- held area, NTV television reported.
Ankara- backed forces faced little resistance when they captured the ISIL border stronghold of Jarabulus last week with US support, days after a suspected ISIL suicide bombing killed 55 people in south-east Turkey.
But the standoff with the Kurdish militia has been intense, with a Turkish soldier killed on Saturday in a YPG rocket attack on his tank. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the clashes were “unacceptable and a source of deep concern”.
“The United States was not involved in these activities, they were not coordinated with US forces, and we do not support them,” he said. The Jarabulus military council – affiliated to the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – said its forces had withdrawn south of the Sajur River, 20 kilometres south of Jarabulus, “to protect the lives of civilians”.
The Turkish army said it had fired 61 times on targets in northern Syria in the past 24 hours. It did not say which group was targeted.