Turkey has no interest in expanding its reach into Syria, with its cross-border operations only aimed at defending the country from “terror attacks”, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday.
“Turkey has no eye on the territory of any other country. The only aim for our cross-border operations is to save our homeland from terrorist attacks,” he said, referring to raids targeting the Kurdish-led YPG based in northeastern Syria.
Since 2016, Turkey has staged multiple operations against Kurdish forces in the area, giving it a foothold in areas bordering the frontier.
Ankara says the aim is to oust Kurdish fighters, notably the YPG (People’s Protection Units) which is backed by Washington as bulwark against Islamic State group (IS) jihadists.
But Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the banned PKK which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey and is also blacklisted as a terror outfit by Washington and Brussels.
Erdogan said Turkey would be closely watching both groups and would not allow them to take advantage of the upheaval in Syria.
“The separatist terrorist organisation and its extensions in Syria might be quite excited in order to make use of this situation, and we follow them very closely,” he said, describing the PKK, YPG and IS as “our enemies”.
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