Erdogan made the comments during a joint press conference with U.S. President Donald Trump following four hours of bilateral meetings that also included a sit-down with Republican senators.<\/p>\n
Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring on Oct. 9 to eliminate YPG\/PKK terrorists from northern Syria east of the Euphrates River in order to secure Turkey’s borders, aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees and ensure Syria’s territorial integrity.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 17, the U.S. and Turkey came to an agreement to pause the operation to allow the withdrawal of terrorist YPG\/PKK forces from the planned safe zone, where Ankara wants to repatriate millions of Syrian refugees it is currently hosting.<\/p>\n
Turkey first requested the establishment of the safe zone during a G20 meeting in Antalya in 2015.<\/p>\n
Erdogan said that during the operation, Turkey secured the return of 365,000 Syrians to Jarablus, the northern border town that was cleared during the operation.<\/p>\n
The Turkish president added that it is “regrettable” that YPG\/PKK leader Ferhat Abdi Sahin, also known as Mazloum Kobane, is taken seriously by Washington.<\/p>\n
Erdogan said Sahin is a “terrorist who caused the deaths of hundreds of Turkish people” and is like an adopted son to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.<\/p>\n
Turkey views Sahin as a terrorist linked to the PKK, whose Syrian branch is the YPG. The PKK is a designated terrorist group in both the U.S. and Turkey as well as the European Union.<\/p>\n
Erdogan reiterated that Turkey “has no problem with Kurds” and only takes issue with terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n
Turning to the anti-Daesh fight, Trump said Turkey is helping “a lot” in the effort, capturing all Daesh\/ISIS militants escaping prisons controlled by the YPG\/PKK.<\/p>\n
Erdogan added that “Turkey and the U.S. can work together to bring peace, stability to Syria and completely finish” the Daesh\/ISIS terror organization.<\/p>\n
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tens of thousands of people died because a safe zone was not implemented quickly enough in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. Erdogan made the comments during a joint press conference with U.S. President Donald Trump following four hours of bilateral meetings that also included a sit-down with Republican senators. Turkey launched …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,80,63,1,118,37,103,101,188],"tags":[78491,13553],"class_list":["post-64463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-middle-east","category-only-on-nationalturk","category-politics","category-turkey-politics","tag-erdogan","tag-syrian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}