The United States has told Turkey it will not provide any more weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, the Turkish presidency said on Saturday, as Turkey’s offensive against the US-backed YPG in Syria entered its eighth day.
The Turkish incursion to northwest Syria’s Afrin region against the YPG has opened a new front in the multi-sided Syrian civil war but has also further strained ties with the US, a NATO ally.
Washington has angered Ankara by providing arms, training and air support to the Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with which it has been locked in a deadly war for three decades.
The Turkish presidency said in a statement on Saturday that Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and US National Security Adviser H R McMaster held a phone call on Friday in which McMaster confirmed that the United States would no longer provide weapons to the YPG.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said it carefully tracked weapons provided to the YPG and would continue discussions with Turkey, after Ankara urged Washington to end its support for the YPG or risk confronting Turkish forces on the ground in Syria.