ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday promised to clear Syria of a US-backed Kurdish militia and militants after the US decision to pull troops out.
“In the next months we will see an operational style aimed at removing the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia) and Daesh elements on the ground in Syria,” Erdogan said in Istanbul.
He promised last week to start a Turkish-led operation before US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered 2,000 American ground forces to leave Syria.
Erdogan welcomed Trump’s decision but said he remained “cautious” because of “past negative experiences,” referring to Ankara’s continued disappointment over the US administration’s failure to stop providing military support to the YPG against Daesh.
In November last year, Turkish officials said Trump had promised not to supply weapons to the YPG militia, although the White House was not as explicit about its intentions.
American support to the YPG militia which spearheaded Washington’s battles in Syria to eliminate militants has long been a source of tension between the NATO allies.
Turkey says the YPG is a “terrorist offshoot” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey, the US and the European Union.

Erdogan said on Dec.12 that Turkey would start an offensive in northern Syria in “the next few days” but on Dec. 14, he spoke to Trump on the phone.
According to Turkish daily Hurriyet on Friday, Trump decided to pull out of Syria during that call with Erdogan and ordered his national security adviser John Bolton to “start the work” to prepare withdrawing troops.
The Turkish head of state on Friday said the US decision meant Turkey would “wait a little longer” before launching an operation which would involve Syrian rebels.
“Of course this is not an open-ended waiting period,” he warned, adding that Turkey was working on plans to “neutralize Daesh elements” that still exist in Syria.
“Mr Trump told us during our conversation ‘will you clean Daesh from here?’ We have cleared them and after this, we will clear them. As long as you give us the support in terms of logistics. And have they (the US) started to withdraw? They have,” he added.

June 18, 2014 – 16:00 AMT

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia chief said his fighters’ intervention in Syria had kept an al Qaeda splinter group that has seized territory in Iraq from spreading west into Lebanon, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, June 17, according to Reuters.

Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim group, has provided significant help to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in retaking some territory from Sunni rebels bent on ousting him. In the process, Hezbollah men have often clashed with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) rebels, who formally broke with al Qaeda in February and have since made rapid gains in Syria and Iraq.

ISIL, which aims to establish a caliphate based on medieval Islamic principles and spanning the two countries, stunned Iraqi leaders when it overran Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul last week, then thrust south to the fringes of Baghdad.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was quoted by Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir as telling a meeting of party backers that ISIL could have spread to Lebanon if Hezbollah had not stepped in.

“If we had not intervened in Syria at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way … ISIL would now be in Beirut.”

Nasrallah praised calls by Shi’ite clerics in Iraq for volunteers to take up arms against ISIL, whose swift advance through majority Sunni areas of northern Iraq threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country.

“The aim of this (call) was not to protect a specific sect, but to protect all of Iraq,” Nasrallah said.

Opponents of Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria say it has dragged Lebanon further into its civil war, worsened sectarian tensions in Lebanon and marked a departure from Hezbollah’s founding mission of confronting Israel.

But members of Lebanon’s Shi’ite community have also been alarmed by the rise of radical Sunni jihadists in Syria.

Sunni militants have hit Shi’ite targets in Lebanon with car bomb attacks, although those have stopped since Hezbollah and Syrian government forces ousted rebels from a series of towns and villages near the Lebanese border in March and April.

Hezbollah and Assad are both backed by Iran, the biggest Shi’ite power, while Sunni Gulf Arab monarchies have backed Sunni insurgents in Syria.

Photo: Bilal Hussein/AP Photo

Erdogan vows to clear Syria of a US-backed Kurdish militia

Hezbollah militia chief says stopped ISIL spreading to Lebanon: report