Turkey to provide 'tactical support' if joins Raqqa operation: PM
Turkey's army was to get involved in an operation to capture the de facto Islamic State (IS) capital of Raqqa only to give 'tactical support,' if the United States agreed to its participation, revealed Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Saturday.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkey's army was to get involved in an operation to capture the de facto Islamic State (IS) capital of Raqqa only to give 'tactical support,' if the United States agreed to its participation, revealed Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Saturday.
"We will not directly take part in the operation if an agreement [the US] is reached in principle," said Yildirim in Germany where he was visiting to attend the Munich Security Conference 2017.
The Turkish PM said the US and his country's troops would support "civilian resisters," the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other militias to control Raqqa which is already under a Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) assault.
Yildirim told journalists that the cooperation between the US and the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) which is spearheading the ongoing SDF campaign on Raqqa was "out of friendship," warning against "serious problems" if the cooperation went on.
"I guess the new US administration will heed these considerations. I will tell this to [the US Vice President Mike] Pence again," said Yildirim about the Kurdish-American alliance in Syria against the IS.
The US already had a plan for Raqqa, but Turks' negotiations with Americans were to determine how to apply it, added Yildirim according to the state-funded Anadolu Agency.
In his meeting on the sidelines of the conference with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Yildirim said he warned against working with the YPG, arguing "it was not right to ally with a terror group against another one."
Yildirim's remarks came as the US Joint Chief of Staff Joseph Dunford met with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar on Friday at Incirlik Airbase in Southern Turkey which serves as a central hub for anti-IS air campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Dunford and Akar talked about Turkish role in countering the IS as the latter proposed a plan to exclude the Kurdish forces from the equation, reported daily Hurriyet newspaper.
The proposal by the Turkish side included an operation to enter Syria through the town of Tal Abyad which would effectively cut off the contiguous Kurdish-held territory in Syria.
American-Kurdish military ties fiercely opposed by Turkey began with and deepened after the IS assault on Kobani in late 2014 under the tenure of the former President Barack Obama.
Editing by Ava Homa