Turkey’s pending military operation in northern Syria to eliminate People’s Protection Units (YPG) terror threats along its border is not tied to U.S.’ pullout from the war-torn country, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Thursday.
Speaking during a live interview on NTV news channel, Çavuşoğlu said Turkey’s intention for a cross-border operation was nothing new as Ankara for a long time has called on Washington to sever its ties with the YPG terrorist organization, the PKK’s Syrian offshoot.
“We signed the Manbij roadmap on June 4. The roadmap was supposed to be fulfilled within 90 days. If that happened, we wouldn’t be talking about this [operation] right now,” the minister said.
Çavuşoğlu said Trump declared the pullout after Ankara announced the military operation and now people in the Trump administration were trying to change the president’s mind about the withdrawal.
“President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan said Turkey would enter the east of Euphrates when there were no mentions of a withdrawal, therefore our offensive against YPG is not tied to the pullout,” Çavuşoğlu said.
“But it’s clear from the statements of [U.S. National Security Adviser John] Bolton and others that they don’t support the idea of a pullout,” he added.
The minister reiterated his call on the U.S. not to mix terrorists with the Kurdish people, adding that if Washington was really “sensitive” about human rights, they would not cooperate with a terrorist organization that oppressed Assyrians and Arabs in the region.
Coordination between the U.S. and Turkey was still ongoing and Çavuşoğlu said he would speak with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the phone to discuss further details.
He also said both Trump and Pompeo were expected to visit Turkey sometime in 2019. Çavuşoğlu said Erdoğan would also hold a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin but the timeline for the meeting was not decided yet.
Speaking about Idlib, he said Ankara was aware of “extremist” groups carrying out attacks inside the buffer zone and Ankara began taking the necessary precautions.
“It is fact that there are terror groups in Idlib. The [Assad] regime carried terrorists by the busloads inside the buffer zone. They hoped to use them as a pretext to carry out an offensive inside Idlib,” he said.
