A senior Turkish official said on Friday that a French pledge to help stabilize a region of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces amounted to support for terrorism and could make France a “target of Turkey”.
French backing for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia, has angered Ankara at a time when it is fighting the YPG in northern Syria .
President Tayyip Erdogan said France had taken a “completely wrong approach” on Syria, adding that he exchanged heated words with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, last week.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the French stance was setting Paris on a collision course with Ankara.
“Those who enter into cooperation and solidarity with terror groups against Turkey…will, like the terrorists, become a target of Turkey,” Bozdag wrote on Twitter. “We hope France does not take such an irrational step.”
Ankara considers the YPG an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey. Its forces drove YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin nearly two weeks ago and Erdogan says it is preparing to extend operations along hundreds of miles of border with Syria.
The Afrin operation has already drawn international criticism, notably from Macron, and Ankara’s pledge to extend it eastwards has also raised tensions with the United States which has 2,000 soldiers stationed in north Syria alongside the SDF.
All three countries – France, Turkey and the United States – are NATO partners but the rift over Syria has increasingly strained relations.
“We have no intention to harm soldiers of allied nations, but we cannot allow terrorists to roam freely (in northern Syria),” Erdogan said.