Turkey hopes Trump stops supporting Syrian Kurds

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – For repairing fractured ties, the administration of the new US President Donald Trump should halt the American support to Syrian Kurdish groups, said a top Turkish government official on Monday.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister and Government Spokesperson Numan Kurtulmus said he hoped Trump would review the current US military aid for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and strengthen relations with his country.

Although PYD is the ruling political party in Syrian Kurdistan, Turkish officials also use the acronym to refer to its US-backed armed wing People’s Protection Units (YPG).

“It is clear that this armed organization which is made up of only a several thousand militants has become the central element of the region’s instability,” Kurtulmus told reporters at an Ankara press conference.

“[The US] must renounce backing this terror group engaged in activities against Turkey,” he added.

Kurtulmus was speaking after a cabinet meeting, reported Kurdistan24’s Ankara Bureau.

During his election campaign, Trump expressed his admiration of the Kurdish forces fighting in Iraq and Syria as he advocated arming them more.

The YPG, whose size exceeds 50,000 fighters according to a 2014 estimate by Reuters, became the primary US ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria in the last two years.

Turkey sees the relationship that began under former President Barack Obama’s watch as illegitimate and accuses the US of supporting terrorism for YPG’s alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Trump, saying some of his remarks about the Middle East were “disturbing.”

A second demand Kurtulmus made from the Trump administration was the extradition of the Pennsylvania-based Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen who Erdogan holds responsible for last year’s coup attempt.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany