Erdogan: We have evidence US supports Daesh

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that he has evidence that the US-led coalition gives support and aid to terrorist groups including Daesh and Kurdish militant groups YPG and PYD.

“They were accusing us of supporting Daesh,” Erdogan angrily told a press conference in Ankara.

“Now they give support to terrorist groups including Daesh, YPG, PYD. It’s very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos,” he said, without presenting any of the intelligence he claimed to the press gathered around him.

The US State Department yesterday rejected as “ludicrous” the accusations made by the Turkish president. State Department spokesman Mark Toner there was no was basis for such an accusation.

The United States has been supporting the YPG as well as the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella force largely controlled by the Kurdish militants, in their attempts to prise the Syrian city of Raqqa from Daesh’s grasp.

Turkey sees the YPG and PYD as Syrian Kurdish extensions of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK has fought a deadly insurgency against the Turkish state for Kurdish independence since the 1980s, and the fighting has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.

Due to its attacks against civilian targets, the PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The Turkish president’s remarks come as Ankara reorients towards Moscow and shifts away from Washington, easing up on its demands for the overthrow of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and facilitating talks between the regime, Russia and the Syrian opposition.