Erdoğan: US Arms to Kurdish YPG Violates NATO Treaty — “You Will Not Have a Future with Us”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has renewed his attack on US support to the Kurdish militia YPG, the leading element in the SDF, declaring that weapons supplies are a violation of the NATO Treaty.

“We will be together in NATO, and you will act together with terrorist groups. What kind of business is this? In this case, the NATO treaty should be revised,” Erdoğan said on Sunday at a rally of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Turkey considered the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) and its YPG militia to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK, which has fought Ankara’s security forces for more than 30 years.

In May the Trump Administration formally confirmed the arrangement, established soon after the SDF’s creation in autumn 2015, of US weapons supplies to the forces, despite Washington’s designation of the PKK as a terrorist group.

“Unfortunately, the countries we say are our allies, countries we consider friends see no problem in cooperating with terror organizations targeting Turkey’s unity,” Erdoğan said on Sunday. He continued: Those who think that they can fool Turkey by saying that they will get those weapons back will eventually understand the vital mistake they made, but it will be too late. We will call to account the real owners of those weapons for every drop of blood they shed with those weapons.

I don’t know what kinds of a future you will have in Syria with the terrorist organization you chose, but you must know that you will not have a future with us.

Erdoğan also denounced the US for its refusal to extradite his former ally Fethullah Gülen, a cleric whom the President accuses of being behind an attempt to overhim him last July: “You inflict deep wounds in Turkey’s heart by harboring a terrorist leader who led a coup attempt in our country.” www.mesop.de