Syrian Kurdish forces should not be core of Raqqa operation, Turkey says

Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik. Photo: AFP

LONDON,— Turkey supports a planned operation to drive Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa but the Kurdish YPG militia should not be the ones at the core of it, Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik told Reuters on Thursday.

“What Turkey focuses and insists on is that instead of solely the YPG forces, the operations must be conducted, as the core of the operatives, by the local people of the region, instead of the YPG,” Isik said in an interview in London.

“Turkey will not allow YPG forces to extend their territory and gain power by using the Daesh operations as an excuse,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Isik also said that YPG fighters had still not retreated east of the Euphrates river as promised after a U.S.-backed operation to take the Syrian town of Manbij from Islamic State.

On August 24, Turkey has launched an incursion into northern Syria to stop the US-backed Kurdish YPG forces from extending areas under their control and connecting Syrian Kurdistan’s Kobani and Hassaka in the east with Afrin canton in the west.

Isik said Turkey would seek no other objective around Manbij provided the YPG forces retreated east.

Isik was speaking after a meeting in London with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who told reporters that the YPG had indeed returned back across the Euphrates.

Turkish army shelling killed six Kurdish YPG security forces in Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan, an area of northwestern Syria controlled by Kurdish groups, overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday.

The two men also discussed the importance of local forces being at the center of any Raqqa operation, the Pentagon said in a statement.

It also said Carter had assured his Turkish counterpart of continued U.S. support for Turkey’s efforts to clear Islamic State from its borders.

Turkey fears the creation of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syrian Kurdistan — similar to the Kurdish region in Iraqi Kurdistan— would spur the separatist ambitions of Turkey’s own Kurds numbering to 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population.

Syrian Kurds have established three autonomous zones, or Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan (northern Syria) in 2013. On March 17, 2016 Syria’s Kurds declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan.

The Syrian pro-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political wing of YPG, has criticized the U.S. for Turkey incursion in northern Syria.