Turkey will clear Syria border area of Kurdish fighters if Russia fails
to act: Erdogan
Ezgi Erkoyun, Tuvan Gumrukcu
4 MIN READ
·
·
ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will
clear northeast Syria of Kurdish YPG militia if Russia does not fulfill its
obligations under an accord that helped end a Turkish offensive in the region,
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday.
FILE PHOTO: Turkey-backed Syrian rebel
fighters gather as a military vehicle advances near the border town of Tal
Abyad, Syria October 24, 2019. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Under the deal hammered out by Erdogan and
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Russian military police and Syrian border
guards are meant to clear the YPG fighters from within 30 km (19 miles) of the
border over a period of six days ending on Tuesday.
From Tuesday, Russian and Turkish forces
will start to patrol a narrower, 10-km strip of land in northeast Syria.
Ankara views the YPG as a terrorist
organization linked to Kurdish insurgents in southeast Turkey. Its Syrian
offensive, launched after President Donald Trump pulled out 1,000 U.S. troops
from the area, drew criticism from Turkey’s NATO allies.
“If this area is not cleared from terrorists
at the end of the 150 hours, then we will handle the situation by ourselves and
will do all the cleansing work,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul.
ADVERTISEMENT
Russia has already warned the YPG that it
will face the full force of Turkey’s army, the second biggest in NATO, if it
fails to withdraw its fighters and weapons from the designated area in
northeast Syria within the agreed deadline.
Erdogan also accused the European Union of
lying because it had promised 6 billion euros ($6.7 billion) to help house and
feed around 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey but had only
provided half of that amount. Turkey has spent around $40 billion euros on the
refugees, Erdogan added.
The president repeated an earlier threat to
send the refugees to Europe if European countries failed to provide more
financial support to help resettle them in a “safe zone” Ankara wants to
establish on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey.
“If Turkey’s plans for the return (of the
refugees)... is not supported, we will have no choice but to open our borders.
We would open the borders, they can go to Europe,” he said.
WAR CRIMES?
Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United
States, have criticized its military incursion in northeast Syria, fearing it
will undermine the fight against Islamic State militants.
In a move sure to further infuriate Ankara,
former prosecutor and U.N. investigator Carla del Ponte said in an interview
published on Saturday that Erdogan should be investigated and indicted for war
crimes over the incursion.
“For Erdogan to be able to invade Syrian
territory to destroy the Kurds is unbelievable,” said del Ponte, a former Swiss
attorney general who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.
“An investigation should be opened into him
and he should be charged with war crimes,” she told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz
am Wochenende in an interview.
Ankara has long accused its Western allies
of turning a blind eye to what it says is a serious security threat it faces
from Kurdish militants based both inside Turkey and in Syria.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu defended
Turkey’s record in Syria on Saturday, saying it was providing humanitarian aid
to civilians there and would not tolerate any human rights violations in areas
where its forces are operating.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu
speaks during a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, October 26, 2019. REUTERS/
Alp Eren Kaya
Cavusoglu, speaking at a joint news
conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, also said there was no
question of forcibly returning refugees to Syria. Amnesty International this
week said Turkey was repatriating some refugees against their wishes to what it
said was still a conflict zone.
Ankara says more than 350,000 Syrian
refugees have already voluntarily returned to their country.