Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

Erdoğan vows to prevent Kurdish state in northern Syria, as Iran warns Turkey

By

By Sevil Erkuş – ANKARA

Erdogan-BarazaniPresident Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Syria, while Iran warned Turkey over military intervention into its neighbor.

“I am addressing the whole world: We will never allow a state to be formed in northern Syria, south of our border,” Erdoğan said at a Ramadan event organized by Turkish Red Crescent in Istanbul  late June 26.

“We will keep up with our struggle whatever the cost is. They are trying to complete an operation to change the demographics of the region. We will not condone,” he said.

Turkey’s pro-government media outlets have recently been claiming that Syrian Kurdish fighters who fought ISIL engaged in “ethnic cleansing” targeting Syrian Turkmens.

Erdoğan criticized those who supported the “#TerroristTurkey” hashtag on Twitter after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched on June 25 its second offensive to capture Kobane, a Kurdish town near Syria’s border with Turkey.

“If you have honor and pride, how can you label a country as terrorist although it hosts people who fled Kobane?” Erdoğan asked, before slamming accusations that Ankara supported ISIL as “slander.”

The president also accused the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian affiliate PYD of preventing Turkey to help more to the people of Kobane.

“I strongly condemn the efforts to corner Turkey,” he said, claiming that ISIL, the PKK and the Syrian regime were “aligned” to undermine Ankara.

The PYD’s armed wing, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), expelled ISIL fighters from Kobane on June 27 and took back full control of the town on the Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Turkey’s government wants more active military action to support the Free Syrian Army (FSA) against the regime, Kurdish and jihadist forces in Syrian territory, but the military is reluctant to do so, playing for time as the country heads for a new coalition government, official sources told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Kurdish state would ‘endanger the region’ Turkish premier Davutoglu says

By

Turkish-Prime-Minister-Ahmet-Davutoglu-Reuters.jpg.pagespeed.ce.YKKd1sc9CFANKARA, Turkey,— A Kurdish state would pose a danger to the region, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with a German newspaper.

“A Kurdish independent state will endanger the region and turn it into chaos,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

“Changing frontiers will bring about fighting between the neighboring countries, that is why it is better the frontiers remain as they are,” he added, in response to a question about Turkish fears of a Kurdish state in the Middle East.

Turkey has strong economic and political ties with its neighboring autonomous Kurdistan Region, but it has remained opposed to Erbil’s aspirations of independence from Iraq.

For decades, successive Turkish governments have had strained relations with the country’s estimated 15 million Kurdish minority, but last March the government began a peace process with the Kurds that has largely lagged due to foot dragging by Ankara.

Referring to Turkey’s Kurds, Davutoglu said that “everyone in Turkey has the right to participate in the political process.”

He added that, “The different communities living in Turkey are satisfied with our political system.”

Although Turkey has lifted a ban on the Kurdish language and allowed it to be taught at private schools, it still has not responded to demands that Kurdish children be taught their own language at public schools.