Turkey is offering to "join forces" with Washington for a special operation inside Syria on condition it doesn't include a Syrian Kurdish militia blacklisted by Ankara but seen as an ally by the US, the foreign minister said.| You guys are the same ones who wouldn't let our boys through to northern Iraq back in 2003, right? |
"If we join forces, they (the US) have their own special forces and we have our special forces," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told a small group of journalists at the southern holiday resort of Antalya.
"The subject we are discussing with the Americans is the closure of the Manbij pocket as soon as possible... and the opening of a second front," he said, referring to a backdoor border route favoured by ISIL for smuggling jihadists into and out of Syria.
"We say okay, a second front should be opened but not with the PYD," he said, referring to the Democratic Union Party (PYD).
Çavuşoğlu said Syrian Arab opposition forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad could be backed up with special forces from Turkey and NATO ally Washington as well as from France, Britain and Germany.
"Unfortunately, both Russia and the United States see a terrorist organisation as a partner and support it," he said of the YPG.
The minister also said that recent deal with Washington, which would have seen American light multiple rocket launchers deployed along its border with Syria to combat ISIL, had been delayed. Under the deal, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) was to have been deployed along the Turkish border by the end of May, but Çavuşoğlu said it would now only happen in August.
"The United States is unfortunately not keeping its promise," he charged. "We are completely ready. Not us, but the US is responsible for the delay."