Turkey's president says US-trained Kurdish militia is a 'terror army'

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey lashed out on Monday against a proposed US-trained force that would potentially position thousands of Kurdish militia fighters along Turkey's southern border.

کد خبر: ۷۶۴۸۷۷

تاریخ: ۲۶ دی ۱۳۹۶ - ۰۹:۱۸

Erdogan denounced the move, vowing to "drown this army of terror before it is born," as Russia and Syria also rejected the idea.

The allied military headquarters in Baghdad, which is leading the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, has said it had started recruiting and retraining members of a Syrian Kurdish and Arab militia to protect the borders of territory captured by the group.

The militia, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF, currently controls a large swath of north-eastern Syria, and, over time, it could grow to 30,000 members, the headquarters said in an email.

The proposed border force appears to signal how the Pentagon intends to support its Kurdish proxies in the longer term in Syria after scaling back its direct military assistance to the Kurds as major combat winds down.

US commanders consider the Kurdish fighters the most capable of the SDF, and of any future border-security force, but Turkey views the Syrian Kurds as terrorists. The new plan threatens to escalate tensions between the United States and Turkey – two NATO allies.

The US military command in Baghdad, which oversees allied operations in eastern Syria against the Islamic State, sought to portray the new border force as no big deal. But Turkey reacted strongly

"The US has now acknowledged that it has established a terror army along our borders," Erdogan said in a tweet on Monday. "Our duty, in return, is to nip this terror army in the bud."

And in a speech, he warned his ostensible ally, the US, that a new military operation against other Kurdish fighters in Afrin, in north-west Syria, was ready to go warning: "Don't stand between us and these herd of murderers. Otherwise, we won't be responsible for the unwanted incidents that may arise".

"Tear off the insignia you have placed on the uniforms of the terrorists so that we don't have to bury them (U.S. soldiers) together with the terrorists."

"Turkey, as a member of the coalition, was not consulted with regard to the establishment of the so-called 'Syrian Border Security Force,'" according to a statement issued on Sunday from the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The statement added that such a force would hamper efforts to wipe out the last remaining pockets of Islamic State fighters along the Euphrates River Valley near the border of Iraq and Syria, as well as in the deserts of western Iraq and eastern Syria.

However, the US said the new force would essentially repurpose as many as 15,000 of the more than 40,000 members of the SDF to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State. About 230 militia in the first class of recruits are currently undergoing training.

"These individuals will bring much-needed experience and discipline to the force," the US military command said in the email, adding that recruiting is underway to fill an additional 15,000 positions, for an eventual total of 30,000 members.

The US command said the force would be drawn from "a force reflecting the populations they serve, both in gender and ethnicity" – an effort to deflect Turkish criticism that the border patrol would be dominated by Kurdish militia.

The new border force will be stationed along the borders of areas now controlled by the SDF, including "portions of the Euphrates River valley and international borders to the east and north of SDF-liberated territory", meaning Iraq and Turkey, the command said.