Türkiye on Friday said it was in talks with Damascus and Washington to resolve the deadly clashes between the Syrian government forces and the U.S.-backed PKK/YPG terrorist group.
“President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is being regularly briefed, and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) is speaking with the Syrian government and the U.S. to resolve the events peacefully,” security sources said in a statement.
They added that Ankara expects the PKK/YPG to “avoid harming Syria’s territorial integrity, political unity or social peace” after days of deadly clashes between the terrorists and Syrian government forces in the northern city of Aleppo.
“Türkiye’s primary aim is preserving Syria’s territorial integrity and centralization,” security sources said.
The Syrian government forces have been fighting the PKK/YPG in Aleppo, the country’s second city, since Tuesday.
Damascus announced a brief cease-fire earlier on Friday and said the terrorists would be escorted to the east of the Euphrates River, but the YPG has since rejected the evacuation call.
In a statement, a local council said the YPG would “resist” the Syrian army and “defend” their neighborhoods, rejecting any “surrender.”
The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group, which has waged a bloody campaign in Türkiye for over four decades. The YPG occupies swathes of Syria’s oil-rich north and northeast and acts as the main ally of the U.S. under the pretext of fighting Daesh terrorists.
The PKK/YPG has carried out multiple attacks across Aleppo since Jan. 6, after occupying several areas in the city, where fighting displaced some 140,000 Syrians.
The terrorist group has also targeted civilian residential areas in Aleppo, killing nine Syrians and wounding 55 others, most of them civilians, since Jan. 6, according to local authorities.
Following the continued assaults, the Syrian military launched targeted operations against PKK/YPG positions in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods, which remain partially contested.
The YPG has continued occupying Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh despite agreeing to withdraw from the areas in April.
Türkiye, which shares a 900-kilometer (550-mile) border with Syria, launched successive offensives to push the YPG from the frontier from 2016 to 2019.
Turkish intelligence aims to “minimize the fallout of the negative impacts on Türkiye of these conflicts near the border, monitor carefully potential migration movements from within Syria towards border areas and ensure the safety of the civilians in the region,” the Turkish security sources said.
They said the clashes between the Syrian army and the YPG in Aleppo neighborhoods with a high Kurdish population resulted from the YPG’s “uncooperative behavior and failure to abide by the March 10 deal,” which envisaged the YPG’s integration into the Syrian military. The YPG’s insistence on maintaining its self-styled autonomy in Syria’s northeast has held back the deal’s implementation.
“Damascus has long offered numerous proposals to the YPG for a peaceful solution, yet the YPG has repeatedly rejected these, adopting instead a maximalist stance and attempting to buy time,” the sources said.
They welcomed the brief cease-fire in Aleppo as a positive step toward re-establishing central authority but cautioned against creating waves of civilian displacement in the region.
