Erdoğan warns no place for ‘terrorist’ groups in Syria

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday there was no place for “terrorist organizations” in Syria under its new Islamist leaders, in a warning regarding Kurdish forces there, Agence France-Presse reported.

The fall of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad last month raised the prospect of Turkey intervening in the country against Kurdish forces accused by Ankara of links to armed separatists.

Erdoğan’s comment came during a meeting in Ankara with the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdish region, Masrour Barzani, the Turkish leader’s office said in a statement.

Erdoğan told Barzani that Turkey was working to prevent the ousting of Assad in neighboring Syria from causing new instability in the region.

There is no place for “terrorist organizations or affiliated elements in the future of the new Syria,” Erdoğan said.

Ankara accuses one leading Kurdish force in Syria, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey.

The PKK has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.

The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighboring Iraq, accusing them of PKK links.

On Monday Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said, “The elimination of the PKK/YPG is only a matter of time.”

He cited a call by Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose HTS group has long had ties with Turkey, for the Kurdish-led forces to be integrated into Syria’s national army.

The United States has backed the YPG in its fight against the extremist movement Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has been largely crushed in its former Syrian stronghold.

But Fidan warned that Western countries should not use the threat of ISIL as “a pretext to strengthen the PKK.”