The U.S.-backed YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK terrorist group, forcibly recruited 2,700 young people in the country's northeastern Hassakeh province, according to a report released Friday.

According to the information Anadolu Agency (AA) obtained from local sources, the YPG terrorist group continues to recruit young people by force in the region.

YPG terrorists detained at least 2,700 people between the ages of 21 and 34 at checkpoints and during raids on local households in March.

Young people, mostly Arabs, are temporarily held for a week at the so-called "referral center" of the YPG in the Panorama region in Hassakeh city center. Terrorists then take the detained people to so-called "training camps" in the province.

While the YPG teaches the people they have kidnapped or detained in Syria to use weapons and make the terrorist group's propaganda, they are threatened not to flee. In fact, at least one young man was injured in January when terrorists opened fire on a group of young people who fled from forced recruitment in the northeast of the country.

The terrorist group applies similar practices in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour.

In January, the terrorist group forcibly recruited more than 150 young people from Deir el-Zour.

The YPG has also seized bakeries and prompted a bread crisis in Hassakeh province, according to a report by Ihlas Haber Agency (IHA) on March 14.

The U.S. has primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria in the anti-Daesh fight. On the other hand, Turkey strongly opposed the terrorist group’s presence in northern Syria, which has been a major sticking point in strained Turkey-U.S. relations. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.' support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and terrorizes 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. While underlining that a country cannot support one terrorist group to fight 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.

Turkey has aimed to prevent the YPG from establishing a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria, which would border Turkey and connect the so-called northwestern Afrin canton to the so-called Kobani (Ain al-Arab) and Jazeera cantons in the northeast. Ankara describes this as a "terror corridor" posing a grave security threat to its national security, underlining its possible impact on the PKK’s activity within Turkish borders.

Local people living in areas held by the YPG have long suffered from its atrocities, as the terrorist group has a notorious record of human rights abuses in Syria, ranging from kidnappings, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.

In its more than 40-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.