Erdogan says US activity in Syria threat to Turkish security

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said that United States military activity with Kurdish forces in Syria poses a threat to Turkey’s national security, a day after US President Joe Biden cited threats from Turkey as grounds to extend a 2019 national emergency order on Syria.

After Turkey launched its Operation Peace Spring against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria (Rojava) in October 2019, former US president Donald Trump declared a national emergency and issued an executive order authorizing sanctions against Turkish officials. 

Biden on Thursday extended the order for another year.

“The situation in and in relation to Syria, and in particular the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” read a statement from Biden.

Erdogan responded saying the US is a threat to Turkey.

“We express the same approach the US President used in his statement concerning Syria yesterday, regarding their own activities in the region,” he said during the closing ceremony of the 4th Turkey-Africa Business and Economic Forum in Istanbul. 

“The activities carried out by the USA in this country [Syria] with the PKK's extensions in Syria pose an extraordinary threat to Turkey's national security,” he said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey but proscribed as a terrorist organization by Ankara.

Ankara considers Kurdish forces in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) - the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - as the Syrian front for the PKK. Turkey has intensified its military operations on PKK bases in the Kurdistan Region and the YPG and SDF in Rojava following a PKK attack in front of the Turkish interior ministry’s general security directorate in Ankara earlier this month.

On October 5, the Pentagon confirmed that US troops in Rojava shot down a Turkish drone deemed a potential threat to American forces.

Erdogan said shooting down the drone has created a security problem between the NATO allies.

“How can we be together in NATO? How can you do something like this? There is a security problem between us,” Erdogan said, adding that Biden’s statement did not align with the spirit of alliance and strategic partnership.

Erdogan was cited by Al-Monitor on Monday saying that Turkey has “successfully” completed the first phase of its operations in Syria and claimed that only YPG members were targeted during the campaign. He said Turkish troops have “neutralized” 162 members of the Kurdish forces. Turkey uses the term “neutralized” to denote adversaries captured, wounded, or killed. 

Kurdish officials, however, have accused Ankara of targeting civilian facilities. “During the past 72 hours, Turkey targeted more than 145 locations in our safe region, including power stations, water and energy facilities, hospitals, and schools,” SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi said on Sunday.

The SDF said that Turkey’s campaign has killed 45 people including 11 civilians and members of the anti-drug forces at a training center.