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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday that Kurdish militants in Syria will either lay down their arms or “be buried,” amid hostilities between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and the militants since the fall of Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Reuters reported.
Following Assad’s departure, Ankara has repeatedly insisted that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia must disband, asserting that the group has no place in Syria’s future. The change in Syria’s leadership has left the country’s main Kurdish factions on the back foot.
“The separatist murderers will either bid farewell to their weapons, or they will be buried in Syrian lands along with their weapons,” Erdoğan told lawmakers from his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in parliament.
“We will eradicate the terrorist organization that is trying to build a wall of blood between us and our Kurdish siblings,” he added.
Turkey views the Kurdish YPG militia – the main component of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a war against the Turkish state since 1984.
The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Ankara has repeatedly called on NATO ally Washington and others to stop supporting the YPG.
Earlier, Turkey’s defense ministry said its armed forces had killed 21 YPG-PKK militants in northern Syria and Iraq.
In a Reuters interview last week, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi acknowledged the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying they had helped battle the Islamic State and would return home if a total ceasefire was agreed with Turkey, a core demand from Ankara.
He denied any organizational ties with the PKK.
Erdoğan also said Turkey would soon reopen its consulate in Aleppo and added that Ankara expected an increase in traffic at its border next summer as some of the millions of Syrian migrants it hosts begin returning home.