Turkey expects the United States to withdraw arms provided to the Syrian Kurds, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Tuesday following talks with US National Security Adviser John Bolton.
ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th January, 2019) Turkey expects the United States to withdraw arms provided to the Syrian Kurds, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Tuesday following talks with US National Security Adviser John Bolton.Bolton said that he had spent Monday in Israel assuring the Jewish state that US troops would not leave Syria until Turkey agrees not to attack US-allied Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria and until the remaining Islamic State (banned in Russia) terrorists have been defeated. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in response slammed Bolton's statement on protecting Syrian Kurdish forces as inappropriate.
"We have discussed the issue of collecting weapons. Turkey expects the United States to return weapons delivered to Syria to Pentagon's arsenals. This condition is not only for our safety, but also for the safety of local residents. We were informed that work in this direction is underway, the details will be known in the coming days," Kalin told reporters.
The Turkish side also handed over a report to the US delegation on "the crimes committed by the YPG [Kurdish People's Protection Units] terrorists in Syria," the spokesman noted.
On December 19, US President Donald Trump declared victory over the Islamic State (IS, outlawed in Russia) terror group in Syria and said he would withdraw the approximately 2,000 US troops currently on the ground in that country. Later, the White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders reported that the United States began withdrawing troops from Syria, but a victory over the IS does not mean the end to the existence of the coalition.
