Türkiye threatens offensive in northeastern Syria if YPG members are not expelled

Jan. 7 (EUROPA PRESS) – The Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, warned this Tuesday that he will carry out an offensive in northeastern Syria against the Syrian Kurdish militia People’s Protection Units (YPG) if they do not expels the members of the group, linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), from the country.

“If they do not want military action, the conditions for it are clear,” the minister said during an interview with the television network in Turkish, adding that Ankara will do “everything necessary” for these conditions to be met.

In mid-December, the Foreign Minister already raised the expulsion of the leaders and members of the YPG from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as an unappealable condition to stop the clashes in the northeast of the country.

Türkiye considers that the YPG militia, integrated into the SDF, is a group linked to the PKK, considered a terrorist group in the country. Since the fall of Bashar al Assad’s regime, Ankara has asked the new Syrian authorities to take charge of this front.

Fidan – who met with the jihadist leader of Syria, Abu Mohamed al Golani, at the end of December – already predicted then that he will not recognize either the YPG or the so-called Kurdish administration of northeastern Syria, Rojava, in the framework of the establishment of a new power structure in the neighboring country.