The SDF is seen by many in the West as crucial to keeping the militants at bay, but Turkey sees it as a major security threat [Hedil Amir/Anadolu Agency/Getty]
Turkey’s top diplomat ruled out any role for French troops in Syria Friday, saying Washington was its only interlocutor as US officials sought to head off Turkish military action against Kurdish fighters.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Paris of turning a blind eye to Turkey’s own security concerns, and called on France to take back its militant nationals jailed in Syria.
Paris and Washington have been hoping to dissuade their NATO ally from escalating an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which helped them defeat the Islamic State (IS) group in 2019.
The SDF is seen by many in the West as crucial to keeping the militants at bay. Turkey however sees it as a major security threat over its ties to the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.
Asked about the possible deployment of US and French troops in northern Syria to ease tensions with the Kurds, Fidan dismissed any role for France.
“The US is our only interlocutor,” he told journalists in Istanbul. “Frankly we don’t take into account countries that try to advance their own interests in Syria by hiding behind the US.
“We have said it many times: there is no chance we can live with such a threat. Either someone else will take the step or we will,” he added.
Turkey, he said, had “the strength, the capacity and above all the determination to eliminate all threats to its survival at the source” echoing threats earlier this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
SDF: crucial bulwark or militant jailer?
SDF forces control dozens of prisons and camps in northeastern Syria where thousands of militants and their families are being held.
Among them are several dozen French nationals alongside other foreign extremists whose home nations are deeply concerned about having to take them back.
Despite Western insistence on the crucial role played by the SDF in holding back an IS resurgence, Turkey has dismissed it as little more than a glorified militant jailer.
“What France should do is take back its own citizens, bring them to its own prisons and judge them,” Fidan said.
“It is wrong to ask the YPG, another terrorist organisation, to keep these prisoners in exchange for support,” he said of the Kurdish group that makes up the bulk of the SDF.
France was ignoring Turkey’s own security concerns by not repatriating its nationals, said Fidan.
“They have a policy, they do not bring IS prisoners back to their own countries. But they do not care about our security,” he said, insisting that Turkey’s only aim was to “ensure stability” in Syria.
“They always put forward their own demands and don’t take any steps about our concerns,” he added, pledging that Turkey would deal with the problem in its own way.
Last month, Fidan said Western support for the SDF was little more than payback for ensuring their own nationals did not return home.
“Unfortunately, our American friends and some European friends are using a terrorist organisation to keep the other terrorists in prison,” he said in an interview with France24.
