Turkey does not need US permission to fight terror, says Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists after concluding his visit to Azerbaijan on Saturday that his country does not need US permission to fight terror, Turkish media reported yesterday.

“If the US is not fulfilling its duty in combating terror, what will we do? We will take care of it ourselves,” Erdogan insisted. “All coalition forces, starting with the US, have provided these terror groups with a serious amount of weapons, vehicles, tools and ammunition and they continue to do so. The US has given them thousands of trucks.”

The Turkish leader’s comments came in response to journalists asking him about his country’s plan for a new operation to establish a safe zone by rooting out a Syrian Kurdish militia from northern Syria. “Like I always say, we will come down on them suddenly one night,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Hurriyet. “And we must.”

On the 569th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, Erdogan pointed out that, “We are fighting against terrorists in northern Syria and we will continue it until they are rooted out.” Without giving a specific timeline, he said that Turkey will launch a cross-border operation against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Turkey and its foreign allies regard the YPG as a terrorist body linked to an outlawed Kurdish group that has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984. The conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the EU, has killed over 40,000 people.

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However, the YPG, according to ABC News, forms the backbone of US-led forces in the fight against Daesh. US support for the Kurdish group has infuriated Ankara and remains a major obstacle to good relations with Washington.

Since 2016, said Anadolu, Turkey has launched a trio of successful anti-terror operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents.

Erdogan also told the journalists that he still intends to block the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. He said that meetings this week with Finnish and Swedish delegations had not been “at the expected level,” noting that there had been no steps taken to alleviate Turkey’s security concerns.

“As long as Tayyip Erdogan is at the head of the Republic of Turkey, we cannot say ‘yes’ to countries that support terror joining NATO,” he said. “They are not honest or sincere. We cannot repeat the mistake made in the past regarding countries that embrace and feed such terrorists in NATO.”