DM Monitoring
ANKARA: Turkey, the only NATO member country fighting Daesh one-on-one in the field, has stepped up its efforts to help the Global Coalition and NATO increase their effectiveness in this fight. One of the most important elements in the upcoming period will be increasing pressure on international partners over the YPG/PKK terrorist group, which continues its logistical and financial cooperation with Daesh in Syria and cannot be considered a legitimate actor in this fight.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who attended the anti-Daesh coalition meeting in Rome this week, reiterated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s comments at the NATO summit in Brussels that Turkey is a country that performs all its duties in the fight against terrorism within the alliance.
Turkey considers Daesh and the PKK/YPG a great threat not only to itself but to other countries as well, particularly Syria, and if cooperation between these organizations on the ground is not terminated, it will be impossible to ensure permanent stability and security in the country. In fact, at the meeting in Rome, Çavuşoğlu opposed the support for YPG/PKK among the coalition partners, under the pretext of fighting Daesh, stressing that they both feed each other financially and logistically.
In contrast, “Turkey is the only NATO country fighting the terrorist group Daesh on the front line” he said. Çavuşoğlu also said that Turkey has disabled the financial structure of Daesh and so far 4,500 militants have been eliminated in Syria and Iraq. “Daesh, despite its withdrawal, is still a threat,” he emphasized.
“The fight against one terrorist group should not be countered with support for another terrorist group,” he said, stressing that the methods used to defeat Daesh in Syria have been faulty since the beginning.
“The YPG/PKK and the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are extensions of the PKK in Syria. The YPG/PKK needs Daesh to maintain its own importance and is benefiting from the presence of Daesh,” he said.
