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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a joint news conference with his Syrian counterpart Assad Al-Shaibani in Ankara on Wednesday and slammed Israel for its policies on Syria.
He stated that Syria was a target of Israel’s expansionism in the region and any sign of instability and chaos benefited Israel.
“Israel should know that weakening Syria would affect other countries as well,” he warned, referring to its occupation of southern Syria and the deadly unrest it stoked among the Druze community in Suwayda last month.
Fidan also urged the YPG to “quit forcing Syria’s Kurds to be puppets of Israel.”
Türkiye is at a stage where it cannot tolerate YPG’s presence in northern Syria any longer, Fidan said.
The YPG is the U.S.-backed Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group. It occupied northern Syria’s oil-rich regions during the civil war and receives military, financial support from Washington under the guise of driving out remnants of Daesh terrorists.
The terrorist group has signed a March deal with the new Syrian government which recognizes Damascus’ sovereignty and stipulates the group’s integration into the Syrian army. The YPG, however, insists on a decentralized Syria and demands to enter the army as one bloc.
The YPG’s push for decentralization and symbolic changes, such as altering the country’s name, is widely seen by Türkiye as part of a broader effort to entrench separatist control in Syria’s north.
Fidan stressed that Türkiye was “not after occupation but we will also not be in a position where we are deceived.”
“Türkiye is starting to see developments we are struggling to tolerate. We see the terrorists are not leaving Syria,” he said.
Fidan called out to “the terrorists they gathered from around the world”, telling the YPG to “cease at once to be a threat to Türkiye and the region.”
“We have no way of sitting still in an environment where Türkiye’s security demands are not satisfied,” Fidan said.
The YPG must stop “quit its game of playing for time”, Fidan added.
