Turkey: PYD is 'selling off' the US
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) - Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu, claimed on Thursday that the main Syrian Kurdish party, Democratic Union Party (PYD), was betraying the United States.
Since the Syrian Civil War began in early 2011, PYD's military wing, Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) has become one of the main US allies in the fight against Islamic State (IS).
The US supports the Kurdish group with airstrikes and semi-regular ammunition shipments.
"That terror organization is now selling off the US. I am using this expression because they opened an office in Moscow," said Cavusoglu in Turkish in an interview with the state-owned Anadolu Agency.
The de facto autonomous region of Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava, opened a representative office in the Russian capital of Moscow on February 10.
Turkey considers PYD and YPG extensions of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is waging a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for autonomy in Kurdistan of Turkey. Turkish FM went on to say that the PYD aims to divide Syria, referring to a map at the Moscow office showing territories the Kurds claim as western Kurdistan in northern Syria.
"The Syrian regime is in close cooperation with the YPG. Is the United States with them [YPG] or the [Syrian] opposition?" asked Cavusoglu in a sign of growing desperation to try to dissuade the US from backing the Kurds.
Reiterating his earlier claims that US Secretary of State John Kerry told him that YPG cannot be trusted, Cavusoglu accused the US of "serious contradictions" in their foreign policy strategies.
Turkey's relations with the US has soured over the last few weeks, as YPG began liberating several towns and villages from Turkish-backed Syrian rebels in northern Syria.
Kurdish forces want to capture the strategic rebel-held city of Azaz to unite the two self-proclaimed cantons of Afrin and Kobani, thus forming a contiguous Kurdish region along most of the Turkish border.
Editing by Ava Homa and Benjamin Kweskin