ANKARA, Oct 30 — Turkey has information that the Kurdish YPG militia has not completed its withdrawal to 30km from the Turkish border in northeast Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, despite assurances from Russia that they had left.
He told lawmakers from his AK Party that Turkey reserved the right to launch another operation against the YPG in the area.
Ankara and Moscow had agreed to remove Kurdish YPG fighters from a depth of 30km south of the border inside Syria by late yesterday and Russia told Turkey that the YPG had left the strip within the 150-hour deadline.
“Even though the information in our hands suggests this has not been succeeded in a full sense, we will give our response to them after our field assessments,” he said.
Joint patrols had been set to begin yesterday at a depth of 10km, but Erdogan said in today’s speech that the patrols would begin on Friday and at a depth of just 7km.
“If we see that the members of the terrorist organisation have not been moved out of the 30km, or if attacks continue, no matter from where, we reserve our right to carry out our own operation,” he said.
Earlier, Defence Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted by state-owned Anadolu Agency as saying that talks between Turkish and Russian officials, ongoing since Monday, had concluded and the two delegations had “largely” reached an agreement.
Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist organisation because of its links to Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey. Ankara launched an offensive against the formerly US-allied YPG following President Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of 1,000 American forces from northern Syria in early October. — Reuters
