Turkey threatens further strikes on US-allied Kurds

BEIRUT — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday his country may take further action against Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, as U.S.-backed forces in Syria closed in on the last neighborhoods of a former stronghold of the Islamic State group.

The U.S. views the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as the most effective partner to counter the Islamic State group in northern Syria, an assessment bolstered by the SDF’s steady advances against the jihadists. But it has complicated relations with Turkey, which views the group’s Kurdish component as an extension of a terror group operating inside its own borders.

In Istanbul, Erdogan insisted that U.S. support for such groups “must come to an end,” and said he would bring up the matter at a meeting with President Donald Trump next month.

The SDF, which include Arab fighters, seized six neighborhoods from IS militants in Tabqa on Sunday, according to the affiliated Hawar news agency.

Tabqa is 25 miles southeast of the Islamic State group’s de facto capital Raqqa and an important stronghold for the militants. It lies next to the Tabqa Dam, one of several controlling the flow of the Euphrates River.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF’s control of Tabqa was “practically total.”

A U.S. air lift of artillery and special forces advisers to place them behind IS lines in March was a turning point in the Tabqa offensive and underscored the closeness between Washington and the SDF.

Turkey, however, has remained hostile to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, known by their Kurdish acronym the YPG, which form the backbone of the SDF. The YPG are close to the Kurdish PKK insurgent group in Turkey, which is designated as a terror organization by NATO and the U.S.