Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Sunday he hoped President Donald Trump would end US cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish YPG, as Türkiye continued its military campaign against the group, killing 23 of its fighters.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said the 23 militants killed by Türkiye’s armed forces in northern Syria belonged to the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Türkiye regards the PKK and YPG as identical, while the United States views them as separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main ally in Syria in the campaign against ISIS.
"We hope that Mr. Trump will make a decision that will put an end to this ongoing mistake in the region," Fidan told a press conference in Doha with his Qatari counterpart.
He said the YPG was incapable of fighting ISIS and only played a role in keeping the group's prisoners in jail, adding that Türkiye, Iraq, Syria and Jordan had held preliminary talks on fighting ISIS.
Türkiye has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in December.
Türkiye has said the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF - a US-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG - must disarm or face military intervention.
Under the administration of former US President Joe Biden, the United States had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.
