Blinken acknowledges PKK's 'enduring threat' to Türkiye while supporting terror group's Syrian branch, SDF

By Rabia Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday acknowledged the "enduring threat" of the PKK and terrorism poses to Türkiye, saying that Ankara has "real interests" regarding what is happening in the northeast Syria.

"Turkey has real interest, particularly when it comes to the PKK and terrorism, which is an which is an enduring threat to Turkey," Blinken told reporters in Aqaba, Jordan before departing for Ankara, Türkiye.

However, he also noted the US' support for SDF, the US's primary anti-Daesh/ISIS partner in Syria, which is led by the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, a designated terrorist group in the US and Türkiye.

"They've been critical in making sure that ISIS has kept at bay. Critical also to guarding the detention facilities where thousands of foreign terrorist fighters have been detained for years, keeping them off of the battlefield, keeping them away from rejoining ISIS. That's a critical mission, and it's one that we have to see be pursued going forward," he added.

"At the same time, again, we want to avoid sparking any kinds of additional conflicts inside of Syria at a time when we want to see this transition to an interim government and to a better way forward for Syria, and part of that also has to be ensuring that ISIS doesn't rear its ugly head again," he said.

The US is is estimated to maintain about 900 troops in eastern Syria as part of a mission to defeat Daesh/ISIS.

Blinken said he is going to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara, adding he will focus on "preventing any actor inside or outside the country from putting their narrow self-interests ahead of the interests of the Syrian people"

"That includes, of course, ISIS, which no doubt, will seek to regroup. And I think, as we've demonstrated, the United States is determined to prevent that from happening," he said.

He said the US is also doing "everything possible" to efforts to find the thousands of disappeared people, children, women and men during the Assad regime, including the American journalist Austin Tice Austin, who was abducted in 2012 in Syria.

"We're determined to find him and bring him home. This is, I think, as I said at the outset, a moment of tremendous potential opportunity," he added.

Asked about Israel's continued airstrikes across Syria as well as its occupation of the buffer zone in Syria's Golan Heights, Blinken defended Tel Aviv's actions.

"What Israel said is that the Syrian forces that were on one side of that buffer zone abandoned the area, and Israel was concerned that that vacuum could be filled by terrorists, by extremists, and so it moved forces into the buffer zone, and it's told us and told others that that's a temporary move," he explained.

He claimed that Israel is trying to make sure that military equipment that's been abandoned by the Syrian army, doesn't fall into the "wrong hands, terrorists, extremists".

"It's also really important at this time that we all try to make sure that we're not sparking any additional conflicts," he added.