{"id":5041,"date":"2015-06-28T16:56:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T15:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/?p=5041"},"modified":"2015-06-28T16:56:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T15:56:56","slug":"turkey-will-never-allow-kurdish-state-in-syria-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/turkey-will-never-allow-kurdish-state-in-syria-erdogan\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey will \u2018never allow\u2019 Kurdish state in Syria: Erdogan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Erdugan\"<\/a>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will never allow the establishment of a Kurdish state in Syria after major gains by Kurdish fighters.
\nIn a strong-worded warning late on Friday, Erdogan accused the Kurds of ethnically cleaning other communities from land they have taken after pushing back Daesh (the so-called IS) forces from the Turkish border.
\n\u201cI say to the international community that whatever price must be paid, we will never allow the establishment of a new state on our southern frontier in the north of Syria,\u201d Erdogan was quoted by Turkish media as telling guests at a dinner to break the Ramadan fast.
\nHe accused Kurdish forces of \u201cchanging the demographic structure\u201d of several areas close to the Turkish border, which also have Arab and Turkmen populations.
\nTurkey has fought a 31-year insurgency in the south east of the country by the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK), which Ankara claims is closely linked to the main Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) militia.
\nErdogan\u2019s comments came a day after the Daesh militants mounted a bloody surprise attack on the Kurdish-held border town of Kobane, killing at least 164.
\nKurdish forces have since driven the militants out of the highly symbolic Syrian town, which the Kurds wrested back from Daesh in January, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
\nErdogan again denied persistent claims of Turkish collusion with the militants, saying, \u201cIt is a big lie to accuse Turkey of having link with a terrorist organization.\u201d
\nDespite ongoing peace talks with the PKK, the creation of any Kurdish zone in the north of Syria deeply worries Turkey, particularly as it borders the already autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
\nTurkey is one of the fiercest opponents of Bashar Al-Assad\u2019s regime in Damascus and has taken in more than 1.8 million refugees since the war in Syria began.
\nBut in an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Saleh Muslim, the head of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) \u2014 the political wing of the YPG militia \u2014 denied they were trying to create an independent state. \u201cWe do not have such a project,\u201d he said.
\nHowever, Turkish media speculated Saturday that Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had asked its military to intervene in Syria earlier in the week.
\nThe press claimed that the military high command demanded a written order from the government, with a new one yet to formed after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its overall majority for the first time in 13 years in a parliamentary election on June 7.
\nHurriyet also claimed that at least 12,000 Turkish troops were ready to enter Syria to create a \u201csecurity zone\u201d to protect the border from the threat posed by Daesh. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n

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