Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Thursday called on the U.S.-backed terrorist group YPG to demonstrate “good intentions” in Syria after clashes in Aleppo, adding that the group remains “a problem” unless it breaks the cycle of violence.
He told journalists at a news conference in Istanbul that the YPG attempted to drive Syria into fragmentation.
Fidan said they hoped the issue would be resolved this year and that Türkiye's decisive and clear policy on the matter would continue in 2026 as well.
The YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, which has killed thousands in Türkiye since the 1980s, engaged in clashes with the Syrian army recently, after Damascus moved to drive out the YPG from two neighborhoods of Aleppo. The Syrian army managed to expel them from the neighborhoods after a week of clashes. Yet, the terrorist group continues to occasionally attack Syrian army positions in Aleppo's east, prompting retaliatory fire from Syrian security forces.
The YPG claimed a self-styled autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the Syrian civil war but agreed to integrate into the post-Assad Syrian army per a March 10, 2025, deal. However, it did not fully implement the deal, to the chagrin of Damascus, which is worried about repeated "decentralization" calls by the YPG.
The U.S. has long supported the YPG under the pretext of a joint fight against Daesh in Syria, despite protests of Türkiye, which insists that the YPG is not a separate entity and simply a wing of the PKK designated as a terrorist group by the West. Fidan said Ankara found it strange that its Western counterparts "found YPG's ties to PKK just now."
Fidan dismissed the YPG's claims to represent Syria's Kurds, reiterating a Turkish foreign policy that favors Arab-Kurdish unity in Syria independent of YPG influence.
"If the case were solely limited to an internal issue in Syria, we would not have a say, but everyone knows what this is all about. The reality is that the PKK is present in four countries in the region. The YPG cannot be treated differently. We know they cannot act without the consent of the PKK. This is a challenge, but we still hope that Syria will regain stability by implementing the March deal," he said.
On the Aleppo clashes, Fidan said Türkiye has already warned that this was bound to happen. "We told them that their presence in the west of the Euphrates River was illegal, but they resisted. Syria used force and they withdrew. They did that in the past, too. This cycle should end," he said.
Fidan accused the YPG of portraying itself as a pro-dialogue entity to buy time for itself while awaiting to exploit any crisis for its own agenda. He said Syria does not need the implementation of the March 2025 deal to resolve the issue.
"They can't move forward anyway by excluding minorities and ethnicities in Syria. But there is a difference between the inclusion of different groups and the emergence of a political entity seeking to join the administration. This is the source of the problem."
