SULAIMANI (ESTA) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday warned Turkey against any military operation in Syria.
Blinken called on Turkey to stick to ceasefire lines established in 2019 after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed threats to “clean up” Tal Rifaat and Manbij of Kurdish fighters.
“It’s something that we would oppose,” Blinken told a joint news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, according to AFP.
“The concern that we have is that any new offensive would undermine regional stability (and) provide malign actors with opportunities to exploit instability,” Blinken said.
The United States has partnered with Syrian Kurdish fighters to fight Islamic State (ISIS) in war-battered Syria. But Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), considered “terrorists” by Ankara.
“We continue effectively to take the fight through partners to Daesh – to ISIS – within Syria and we don’t want to see anything that jeopardizes the efforts that are made to continue to keep ISIS in the box that we put it in,” AFP quoted Blinken as saying.
