US tells Turkey it will end weapons support for Syrian Kurdish militia

ankara — The United States has told Turkey it will not provide any more weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, Turkish state media said on Saturday, as Turkey’s offensive against the US-backed YPG in Syria entered its eighth day.

The Turkish incursion in northwest Syria’s Afrin region against the YPG has opened a new front in the multi-sided Syrian civil war.

Washington has angered Ankara by providing arms, training and air support to the Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed PKK, which has waged a deadly insurgency in Turkey for three decades.

Turkey’s Anadolu news agency said on Saturday that Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan, and US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster held a phone call on Friday in which McMaster confirmed the United States would no longer provide weapons to the YPG.

On Thursday, the Pentagon said it carefully tracked weapons provided to the YPG and would continue discussions with Turkey, after Ankara urged Washington to end its support for the YPG or risk confronting Turkish forces on the ground in Syria.

On Friday, Erdogan said Turkish forces would sweep Kurdish fighters from the Syrian border and could push all the way east to the frontier with Iraq — a move which risks a possible confrontation with US forces allied to the Kurds.

Since the start of the incursion by Ankara, Erdogan has said Turkish forces would push east towards the town of Manbij, part of Kurdish-held territory some 100km east of Afrin, where US troops were deployed to deter Turkish and US-backed rebels from clashing. —