Oncupinar – Turkey on Saturday urged the United States to withdrawpersonnel from a Kurdish-held town in northern Syria after Washington toldAnkara it would stop arming a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkey isfighting.
As Turkey’s offensive in Syria entered its second week with new air strikesand artillery, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “necessary forthem (US) to immediately withdraw from Manbij”, where Washington has amilitary presence.
Turkey launched operation “Olive Branch” on January 20 against the SyrianKurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in its western enclave ofAfrin, supporting Syrian opposition fighters with ground troops and airstrikes.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expand the offensiveagainst the YPG to Manbij, east of Afrin.
Relations between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have worsened sinceTurkey launched an operation, with the United States urging restraint andfearing an impact on the fight against the Islamic State (IS) extremistgroup.
One of the issues marring relations was the US supplying the YPG militia –which has spearheaded the anti-jihadist fight — with arms since last yearin battles against IS.
Manbij itself was retaken from IS by the Kurdish-led, US-backed SyrianDemocratic Forces in 2016 as part of a push that would later recapture thecity of Raqa from the jihadists.
The Turkish presidency said US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster”confirmed” to Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin in a phone call lateFriday that Washington would no longer “give weapons to the YPG”.
Ankara says the YPG is a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed KurdistanWorkers’ Party (PKK) which is proscribed as a terror group by Ankara andits Western allies.
“God willing we will crush them (terror groups) like a steam roller,”Erdogan said Saturday during a speech in Istanbul.
– ‘Cut ties with YPG’ –
The offensive came after the US-led coalition fighting IS announced thismonth that it is working to create a 30,000-strong border security force innorthern Syria.
Erdogan at the time reacted strongly to the force which would be composedpartly of YPG fighters, describing it as an “army of terror”.
“The US must cut its ties with a terror organisation. It must take back theweapons it has given,” Cavusoglu said, adding that Turkey “now wanted tosee concrete steps taken” beyond verbal promises.
During their call, McMaster and Kalin cited Turkey’s “legitimate securityconcerns” and agreed to coordinate closely in order to preventmisunderstandings.
The call came just days after Washington and Ankara bitterly contested eachother’s accounts of a telephone conversation between Erdogan and USPresident Donald Trump.
A White House statement said Trump urged Turkey to “limit its militaryactions”, but a Turkish official said this was not an accurate reflectionof the leaders’ call.
There have been expressions of concern over the offensive from otherWestern allies including the European Union, France and Germany.
German officials also warned against tensions between the country’s hugeKurdish and Turkish communities as hundreds of Kurds took to the streets ofCologne Saturday in protest over the military operation.
Germany is home to some one million Kurds and three million people ofTurkish origin.
– Syrian rebels ‘take village’ –
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group told AFP that thefighting was concentrated in the northwest part of Afrin region.
Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels had taken a village and were makingprogress, albeit “slowly because of bad weather”, Observatory head RamiAbdel Rahman said.
There were also continued air strikes and artillery fire Saturday, he added.
The Turkish military said “at least 394 terrorist organisation members wereneutralised” in the operation thus far.
It was not possible to independently verify the toll.
The Observatory said that 111 Ankara-backed rebels and Kurdish fightershave been killed between both sides since last Saturday.
It said 38 civilians have been killed, mainly as a result of Turkishshelling, but Ankara strongly rejects such claims.
Turkey’s AFAD emergencies agency head Mehmet Gulluoglu told reporters atthe Oncupinar border crossing in the Kilis province that they were makingplans for a camp to be established in the Syrian town of Azaz held byAnkara-backed rebels “in the face of a possible refugee influx from Afrin”.- AFP