Turkey: US must take back weapons delivered to Kurds
The Pentagon must immediately take the weapons and ammunition it sent to Syrian Kurds’ People’s Protection Units (YPG) for combating IS back to US arsenals, Turkish Presidential Press Secretary Ibrahim Kalin said.
Last Friday, US President Donald Trump held telephone talks with his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan. According to the White House, the American leader informed his colleague about adjustments under consideration regarding military support for America’s partners in Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Trump assured Erdogan that he had given instructions to stop the supply of American weapons to the YPG, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
"We remember how earlier the United States lost track of weapons supplied to Iraq for similar purposes, so Washington must take concrete steps (for the return the weapons)," the agency Anadolu quotes Kalin as saying.
He criticized the Pentagon's statements that "military assets that do not pose threats to Turkey" will be left in the YPG arsenal. "Only Turkey has the right to decide what or who exactly threatens its national security," Kalin said.
According to Kalin, given the fact that the operations against the terrorists of IS* have been completed, arms supplies for Syria are no longer needed; and if US weapons remain in the YPG arsenal in Syria, the situation in the region will become even more unstable.
"If weapons are resumed, chaos and instability in the region will worsen. Turkey will not accept such a scenario. The US should sever ties with terrorist organizations such as YPG," Kalin said.