Turkey may start a military operation in Syrian Manbij against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), as the United States has failed to fulfill the promise on the Kurds' withdrawal, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th October, 2018) Turkey may start a military operation in Syrian Manbij against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), as the United States has failed to fulfill the promise on the Kurds' withdrawal, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
In early June, Turkey and the United States adopted a road map that provided for the withdrawal of the US-backed YPG, which is regarded by Ankara as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), from Manbij. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, the United States and the European Union. On October 3, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin slammed the United States for delaying the YPG withdrawal.
"We were promised that within 90 days they [YPG] will leave. They have not left. The terrorist organization is digging trenches in Manbij. What does it mean? They have prepared a cemetery � 'come and bury us.' We will come there as well. Turkey will do what must be done," Erdogan said.
Turkey has been claiming that the YPG's presence near its border hampers its national security. Earlier this year, it conducted an offensive against the Kurdish militia in Syria's northern border city of Afrin. Ankara is also currently engaged in an operation to eliminate Kurdish strongholds in northern Iraq.
Manbij has been controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since August 2016 when the SDF captured the city from the terrorist groups, including the Islamic State (banned in Russia), which took it over in January 2014.
