ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey’s prime minister warned that his country will target Kurdish forces in Syria if they are found to be supplying weapons received from the United States to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In a major boost for forces fighting Islamic State (ISIS) extremists in Syria, the United States on Monday began airdropping pallets of weapons and ammunition to the Syrian Kurdish PYD and allied Arab forces in northern Syria. That has stirred controversy in Turkey, which opposes arms to the PYD and its armed wing, YPG, because of its links to the PKK.
“If you send weapons to PKK in Turkey, we will treat you as PKK and attack you inside Syria,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned after a visit to the site of deadly bomb blasts in Ankara earlier this month.
“Whenever we find weapons in Turkey they will be destroyed, because the weapons dropped to PYD will be obtained by PKK too, and they are going to use them against the Turkish state.” Davutoglu said in comments directed at the United States and Russia.
“Recently, on the one hand PKK is attacking Turkey, on the other; PYD receives weapons, and later these weapons are going to be used against Turkey,” said Davutoglu, whose government has been pounding the PKK in northern Iraq and Turkey’s own Kurdish southeast for weeks.
The US air drop to the PYD came just two days after the Pentagon announced it had ended its ill-fated $500 million program to train and equip vetted Syrians to fight ISIS.
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