ANKARA (Reuters) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed on Friday (13) the need for continued efforts to combat any resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria after .
“Our countries have worked hard and given so much of themselves for many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of Isis, to ensure that this threat does not arise again, and it is imperative that we continue these efforts,” Blinken said alongside Fidan after meeting in Ankara.
The talks also focused on a critical aspect of establishing stability in Syria — clashes in the north of the country between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and Turkish-backed rebels.
Fidan said after the meeting that Turkey’s “priority in Syria is to ensure stability… as quickly as possible, to prevent terrorism from gaining ground and the PKK from dominating the country.”
“We discussed in detail what we can do about this, what our common concerns are and what our common solutions should be,” he said.
NATO allies Washington and Ankara supported the Syrian rebels during the 13-year civil war, but their interests conflicted when it came to one of the rebel factions — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
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The SDF is the main ally of a US coalition against Islamic State militants. It is led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara sees as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it bans and which has been fighting the Turkish state for 40 years.
Blinken, who met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday night (12), also said there is a broad consensus on what Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria after Assad’s fall.
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Earlier this week, Turkish-backed forces seized the northern city of Manbij from the US-backed SDF, who then headed east of the Euphrates River. A Syrian opposition source told Reuters that the US and Turkey had reached an agreement on the withdrawal.
Neither Blinken nor Fidan made any reference to an agreement between Turkish-backed Syrian forces and the SDF.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis)
