Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın said the United States has turned a blind eye to Turkey’s national security concerns by providing support to terrorists regardless of which administration comes to power.
He noted that their problems will not be solved unless the latter meets Ankara’s expectations on its national security concerns.
He said that former President Donald Trump practically reversed all policies of the Obama administration, with the exception of its stance on the PKK terrorists’ Syrian offshoot, the YPG.
“He reversed everything signed by Obama, except for our issue,” Kalın said, as he noted that Biden continues to maintain U.S. support for the terrorists.
“Everybody knows where the canton structure is going and this will create problems for you in the future,” Kalın said, noting that the YPG terrorists, which are located across the border, are Turkey’s enemies and pose a national security threat to the country.
“This policy has to change. It divides Syria,” he added.
Kalın continued by saying that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been saying that this problem needs to be resolved in the third president’s term as he said the U.S. only cooperates with them due to its interests.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Turkey and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara.
The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria in its fight against the Daesh terrorist group. On the other hand, Turkey strongly opposed the YPG's presence in northern Syria. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.' support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and that terrorizes the local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.
Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns. Underlining that one cannot support one terrorist group to defeat another, Turkey conducted its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.
