Turkey FM: Biden admin is not telling the truth to Congress

Turkey’s foreign minister has accused the Biden administration of not telling the truth to Congress and the American people, as it extended the executive national emergency order in Syria.

On Thursday, the US extended its state of emergency order – issued in 2019 when Turkey launched a military operation into northern Syria – for another year. In a letter issued that day by the Biden administration, which looked notably similar to the one issued by the Trump administration two years ago, it claimed that Turkey’s military presence and activities in northern Syria pose a threat to national security.

So much buzz on Biden’s Syria authorisation which claims Turkey is posing an extraordinary threat to the US national security

Actually Trump used exactly the same sentence against Turkey in October 2019, when Ankara had another Syria incursion. pic.twitter.com/qSkxPHZbNg

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) October 8, 2021

Mevlut Cavusoglu hit back during a joint press conference with his Venezuelan counterpart Felix Plasencia on Saturday, stating that “Instead of blaming Turkey, the US should abandon its own wrong policies, and should be more honest with the American people and its Congress.”

Çavuşoğlu noted the similarities of the letter to the Trump administration’s, calling it a “copy-paste” effort. He said that the reason for the renewal of the decree “is the US’s cooperation with the YPG terrorist organisation, which the US takes very seriously.”

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Since 2015, Washington has supported, backed, and armed Kurdish militias in Syria such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). That support has long angered Ankara, which regards those militias as Syrian branches of the designated terrorist organisation, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The US continues to insist, however, that it backs the militias for the purpose of combatting elements of Daesh within Syria, where scattered cells of the terror group continue to persist.

Cavusoglu denies those claims, though, stressing that “we [Turkey] know very well that the purpose of being here is not to fight against Daesh…we have fought against Daesh. In NATO and the world, the only army that is fighting against it is our army.”