Turkey summons Russia envoy over sniped soldier

Turkey summoned the Russian charge d’affaires to convey its unease after a Turkish soldier was killed by sniper fire from a part of Kurdish-held Syria where Russian forces are active, Turkey’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

The Turkish military fired into the northwestern Syrian border region of Afrin on Wednesday, an area controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia, after the soldier was killed by cross-border fire. The YPG said Russian forces headed to the area.

The Turkish military said the soldier was killed in the Turkish province of Hatay, across the border from Syria’s Afrin, which is controlled by the leftist militia, closely linked to Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed group branded as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Read: Turkey seeks military cooperation with Russia in Syria

The YPG is a military ally of the United States and is playing a major part in US-backed operations against Daesh in areas of Syria further to the east, where the US yesterday airlifted YPG militants to fight Daesh at the Tabqah Dam near Raqqa.

The leftist extremists have also built ties to Russia, and said this week that Moscow was setting up a military base in Afrin and would help train YPG fighters.

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said Turkey expects Russia to respect its sensitivities and described pictures which circulated online of Russian soldiers with Kurdish militia fighters as “unpleasant”. The charge d’affaires was summoned on Wednesday, he said.

At a briefing with journalists, he also said the inclusion of YPG fighters in the US-led operation to take Raqqa from Daesh was unacceptable. Turkish forces were ready to take part in collaboration with the US-led coalition, he said.

Further attacks today

 In related news, one Turkish soldier was killed and four were wounded in an armed attack by leftist Kurdish militants in Turkey’s southeastern province of Hakkari, the Turkish military said today.

Read: Syria says Turkey shelled its forces, causing deaths

Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast has been ravaged by violence, as the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has targeted security forces since abandoning a 2-1/2-year ceasefire in July 2015.

In a statement released earlier today, the military said the four wounded soldiers were not in critical condition.