Turkey’s top diplomat on Friday said Washington was its only interlocutor in northeastern Syria and urged France to repatriate its nationals jailed in the country over membership in Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Agence France-Presse reported.
The remarks by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan came as Washington tried to dissuade its NATO ally from escalating an offensive against Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria.
Ankara has threatened military action against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US ally that has been key in fighting ISIL militants and which controls dozens of prisons and camps where ISIL members are held.
Turkey sees the group as linked to its domestic nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.
“The US is our only counterpart” for developments in northeastern Syria, Fidan said, dismissing the concerns of other Western nations about the potential return of ISIL militants to their own countries.
“Frankly we don’t take into account countries that try to advance their own interests in Syria by hiding behind US power,” he said.
France, he said, was ignoring Turkey’s security concerns by not repatriating French ISIL militants but leaving them to be guarded by the SDF, which Turkey sees as a threat to its own national security.
“They have a policy, they do not bring [ISIL] prisoners back to their own countries. But they do not care about our security,” he said, insisting that Turkey’s only aim was to ensure “stability” in Syria.
Asked about the possibility of a French-US troop deployment in northeast Syria, he said France’s main concern should be to take back its nationals.
“If France had anything to do, it should take its own citizens, bring them to its own prisons and judge them,” he said.
Despite Washington’s insistence on the SDF’s crucial role in keeping the extremists at bay in northeastern Syria, Fidan said last month its only job was “keeping [ISIL] prisoners in jail.”
“Unfortunately, our American friends and some European friends are using a terrorist organization to keep the other terrorists in prison,” he said in an interview with France24.