Turkey calls for end to US support for Syrian Kurds

ISTANBUL — Turkey called Monday for the United States to end its support for a Kurdish militia in northern Syria as crucial talks between the two countries headed into a second day. 

"The US should positively answer our request to end its partnership with the YPG in Syria," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

The statement came as US defence officials met their counterparts in Ankara for last-ditch talks aimed at creating a "safe zone" in northern Syria to keep the Kurdish YPG militia away from Turkey's border. 

Those talks would continue into Tuesday, the Turkish defence ministry said in a statement. 

Washington has supported the YPG as the main fighting force against the Daesh group in Syria. 

But Ankara sees it as an offshoot of the Kurdish PKK, which has fought a bloody separatist insurgency inside Turkey for the past 35 years.

Turkey has so far been unimpressed with the details of the US “safe zone” plan in Syria and has renewed threats to launch a cross-border offensive if the talks fail to reach a “satisfactory” conclusion. 

“We can only be patient for so long. That patience will come to an end,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday. 

He repeated a threat he has persistently made for the past 18 months to launch an offensive east of the Euphrates River against the YPG.

Turkish media has regularly shown images in recent weeks of military convoys heading for the border area, carrying equipment and fighting units. 

Turkey has twice carried out unilateral offensives into northern Syria against the Daesh group and YPG, in 2016 and 2018 respectively. 

It wants full control of a wide buffer zone across northern Syria, an area that has largely fallen under the command of Kurdish leaders since their successful, US-backed operations against extremists.