Emotional reunion shows plight of Syria’s lost children

Hajar Saleh poses with her grandson Jaafar as she holds a picture depicting Jaafar's parents, Amina Saleh and her husband Imad Azouz who were killed fleeing Syria's civil war, at a garden in the Damascus district of Mezzeh,

By Dahlia Nehme

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – When Jaafar’s grandmother recognized him by his birthmark in a Turkish orphanage, months after his parents were killed fleeing Syria’s civil war, she held him tight, screaming for joy.

The story of how Hajar Saleh, a 47-year-old nurse, spent fraught weeks tracing her grandson in a foreign country and many months trying to bring him home underscores the terrible plight of Syria’s thousands of lost children and their families.

Jaafar was only three-months-old when his parents, Amina Saleh, 23, and her husband Imad Azouz, 25, decided to flee their home in the Sayeda Zeinab suburb of Damascus, close to a frontline, and seek a better life for their family abroad.

Palestinian refugees whose families had been in Syria for decades, they lacked legal travel documents, so they gathered their scant savings and paid a smuggler to guide them across the border into Turkey from an area held by Kurdish groups.

A last photograph Amina sent her mother before the attempted border crossing in January 2016 shows her smiling warily at the camera, wearing a heavy winter coat and black headscarf and holding Jaafar, a tiny pink baby in yellow romper suit.

But when they tried to cross the frontier a few hours later with dozens of other refugees in a smuggler convoy in northeast Syria, the Turkish border guards who battle Kurdish insurgents there opened fire. Amina and her husband were killed.

Little Jaafar escaped unscathed, protected by his father’s body, and was gathered up by survivors of the shooting and taken to the nearby Turkish city of Mardin, where they gave him into the care of a local judge.

Hajar’s account of the ill-fated border crossing comes from them and from what Turkish authorities told the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, she said.

Before they left Mardin, some of the refugees phoned Hajar to inform her of the fate of her daughter and son-in-law, and to give her the name and phone number of the judge, the start of her months-long odyssey to reclaim her grandson.

“I still have two sons, but Amina was my only daughter. My friend and secret keeper,” said Hajar apologetically, as if to justify her frequent sobbing and the black clothes of mourning she still wears for the dead couple.

LOST CHILDREN

UNICEF told Reuters in March it had documented the cases of 650 separated children in 2016 alone, but that the likely number of undocumented cases was probably far higher.

Since the war began in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and about half the country’s pre-war population made homeless, large numbers of them children.

After learning about her grandson’s plight, Hajar approached every local and international organization she could think of seeking help.

Eventually, UNICEF and the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR located Jaafar and secured travel documents for her to visit Turkey to pursue the legal process of proving kinship and claiming him.

“My daughter always came to me in my dreams and would beg me to bring her son back and raise him,” she said, speaking in the UNICEF headquarters in Damascus.

Little Jaafar, now 16-months-old, wide-eyed, smiling and well-groomed, was meanwhile snatching at everything in his reach and fidgeting to escape his grandmother’s lap for a few steps before quickly returning to her.

Hajar’s journey to the orphanage in Mardin was nearly over before it began, a victim to the chaos inflicted by the attempted coup d’etat in Turkey last summer, a day before she was scheduled to fly, which closed all the country’s airports.

With her Lebanese visa running out, Hajar only managed to fly to Ankara five days later with a day to spare before she would have been returned to Syria.

Unable to speak Turkish and having never traveled before, she was lost for five hours while changing flights in Istanbul before UNHCR officials found her and guided her onwards. After a 16-hour bus drive from Ankara, she finally reached Mardin.

REUNITED

As soon as Hajar saw Jaafar in the Cucuk Evleri Sitesi Mudurlugu orphanage, she recognized him by the prominent birthmark on his forehead, she said.

“I held him tight, crying and screaming in joy and I fainted afterwards,” she said. “When I woke up I held him tight again and sobbed. He stared at me. He didn’t cry or feel afraid. Instead he wiped my tears away,” she added.

With little money left and the weather turning colder, Hajar’s efforts to bring Jaafar home were further complicated by the Turkish government’s purge of the judiciary in the aftermath of the attempted coup, she said.

It took three months to prepare a DNA test and find a judge who could verify it and give her permission to take home her grandson.

“Every time a judge assumed my case, he would be replaced soon after,” she said.

The Turkish authorities told her where her daughter and son-in-law were buried in unmarked graves, but she was unable to visit them. Even when they finally tried to fly back in December, a blanket of heavy snow delayed their journey for days.

But now they have returned to her home in Sayeda Zeinab.

“Jaafar is full of energy and loves putting himself in trouble,” she said. “But for the sake of my daughter, I will raise him as well as I can.”

(Editing by Angus McDowall and Angus MacSwan)

Turkey may hit Netherlands with sanctions as ‘Nazi’ row escalates

People shout slogans during a protest in front of the Dutch Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey

By Tulay Karadeniz and Ercan Gurses

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Turkish cabinet was on Monday expected to consider imposing sanctions on the Netherlands in a deepening row with its NATO ally over a ban on its ministers speaking at political events in Rotterdam, and one minister said punitive measures were likely.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who is seeking support from Turks in a referendum on boosting his powers, has accused the Dutch government of acting like “Nazi remnants” and said it should face sanctions for barring his ministers from addressing expatriate Turks to drum up votes.

The row marks another low point in relations between Turkey and Europe, further dimming Ankara’s prospects of joining the bloc. It also comes as Turkey is caught up by security concerns over militant attacks and the war in neighboring Syria.

A source close to the government told Reuters that sanctions were expected to be discussed when the cabinet of ministers meets at 7 pm (1600 GMT). Ankara’s minister for EU Affairs, Omer Celik, said sanctions were likely.

“We will surely have sanctions against the latest actions by the Netherlands. We will answer them with these,” Celik said.

Apart from any economic measures, a source in Ankara said sanctions could affect cultural activities, and military and technological cooperation.

Turkey summoned the Dutch charge d’affaires on Monday to complain about the ban – imposed due to fears of unrest and distaste at what the Netherlands sees as an increasingly authoritarian tone from Erdogan – and the actions of Rotterdam police against Turkish protesters over the weekend, foreign ministry sources said.

On Sunday, Dutch police used dogs and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters waving Turkish flags outside the consulate in Rotterdam. Some protesters threw bottles and stones and several demonstrators were beaten by police with batons, a Reuters witness said. Mounted police officers charged the crowd.

“The Turkish community and our citizens were subject to bad treatment, with inhumane and humiliating methods used in disproportionate intervention against people exercising their right to peaceful assembly,” a statement attributed to ministry sources said.

The Dutch government barred Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from flying to Rotterdam on Saturday and later stopped Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya from entering the Turkish consulate there, before escorting her back to Germany.

Protests then erupted in Turkey and the Netherlands. Several European countries, including Holland, have stopped Turkish politicians holding rallies, due to fears that tensions in Turkey might spill over into their expatriate communities.

Some 400,000 Turkish citizens live in the Netherlands and an estimated 1.5 million Turks live in Germany.

The Dutch government said the visits were undesirable and it would not cooperate in their campaigning. According to polls, it is set to lose about half its seats in elections this week as the anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders makes strong gains.

Monday was the third time the Dutch envoy had been called in since Saturday over the row. The Dutch ambassador is on leave and the Turkish foreign ministry says it does not want him back  “for some time”.

SANCTIONS

Dutch direct investment in Turkey amounts to $22 billion, making the Netherlands the biggest source of foreign investment with a share of 16 percent.

Ozgur Altug, chief economist at BGC Partners in Istanbul, said at this stage he did not foresee the row having serious short-term economic consequences.

“However, if the tension escalates and if countries start imposing sanctions against each other, it might have serious implications for the Turkish economy,” he said.

Turkish exports to the Netherlands totalled $3.6 billion in 2016, making it the tenth largest market for Turkish goods, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute. Turkey imported $3 billion worth of Dutch goods in 2016.

Dutch visitors are important to Turkey’s tourism industry, which was hit hard in 2016 by security fears due to attacks by Islamic State and Kurdish militants. Some 900,000 Dutch people visited Turkey last year, down from 1.2 million a year earlier.

A source close to the government told Reuters that sanctions, if imposed, may go beyond the economy.

“When the sanctions are imposed, what we need to be careful about is being realistic. We are not completely closing the windows,” the source said. “However, we want to show that what has been done to Turkey will have a response.”

He said certain cultural activities may be cancelled and the re-evaluation of military and technological cooperation was also on the table.

Ankara is seeking an official written apology for the treatment of its family minister and diplomats in Rotterdam,     the Turkish foreign ministry sources also said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said it is Erdogan who should apologize for comparing the Netherlands to fascists and Nazis, adding that Turkey was acting “in a totally unacceptable, irresponsible manner”.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Turkey and the Netherlands to defuse the row.

At the weekend, Erdogan dubbed the Netherlands “Nazi remnants” and said “Nazism is still widespread in the West”, comments echoed in Turkish media on Monday.

“Nazi Dogs,” said a front-page headline incorporating a swastika in the pro-government Aksam newspaper, above a photo of a police dog biting the thigh of a man during Saturday night’s protest in Rotterdam.

(Additional reporting by Ebru Tuncay in Istanbul and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Giles Elgood)

Turkey and Russia have ceasefire plan for Syria, says Ankara

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan arrive for a joint news conference following their meeting in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Orhan Coskun and Ellen Francis

ANKARA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey and Russia have prepared an agreement for a ceasefire in Syria, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Wednesday, adding Ankara would not budge on its opposition to President Bashar al-Assad staying on as leader.

The comments from Mevlut Cavusoglu appeared to signal tentative progress in talks aimed at reaching a truce. While the insistence on Assad’s departure could complicate negotiations with his biggest backer Russia, another Turkish official did not rule out a transitional role for the Syrian president.

Russia, Iran and Turkey said last week they were ready to help broker a peace deal after holding talks in Moscow where they adopted a declaration setting out the principles any agreement should adhere to. Russia has said the next talks are set for Astana, the Kazakh capital.

“There are two texts ready on a solution in Syria. One is about a political resolution and the other is about a ceasefire. They can be implemented any time,” Cavusoglu told reporters on the sidelines of an awards ceremony at the presidential palace in Ankara.

He said Syria’s opposition would never back Assad.

“The whole world knows it is not possible for there to be a political transition with Assad, and we also all know that it is impossible for these people to unite around Assad.”

Last week, Russia’s foreign minister said Russia, Iran and Turkey had agreed the priority in Syria was to fight terrorism and not to remove Assad’s government – comments that suggested a shift by Turkey, which has long pushed for Assad’s ouster.

Sources told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.

A senior Turkish government official said on Wednesday that future discussions would likely hash out Assad’s role.

“We put importance on the establishment of a transitional government and that it would be one that meets the demands of the Syrian people,” the official said. “Whether or not Assad will take place in the government will be discussed in the coming period.”

Assad will not be attending the talks in Astana, which are likely to be held at the undersecretary level “at most”, the official added.

STICKING POINT

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said earlier on Wednesday Moscow and Ankara had agreed on a proposal towards a general ceasefire. The Kremlin said it could not comment on the report.

A Syrian rebel official said meetings between Ankara and rebel forces were expected to continue this week, but he could not confirm whether a final ceasefire agreement had been reached.

The rebel official told Reuters a major sticking point was that Russia wanted to exclude the Damascus countryside from the ceasefire, which the rebels were refusing to do.

A second rebel official told Reuters there was no agreement yet from the side of the rebel factions. “The details of the ceasefire deal have yet to be officially presented to the factions,” he said.

Russia’s foreign minister said on Tuesday the Syrian government was consulting with the opposition ahead of possible peace talks, while a Saudi-backed opposition group said it knew nothing of the negotiations but supported a ceasefire.

Russian officials have said invitations to participants for the Astana talks have not been sent out and the time has yet to be decided.

The talks would not include the United States and would be distinct from separate, intermittent U.N.-brokered negotiations.

In Berlin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Germany supported any effort to solve the conflict by political means, adding the United Nations also had an import role to play.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura had spoken by phone with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and supported the efforts to establish a ceasefire and new peace talks.

The Syrian opposition’s main political body on Tuesday urged rebel groups to cooperate with “sincere regional efforts” to reach a ceasefire deal but that it had not been invited to any conference, referring to the Kazakhstan meeting.

The Turkish military said on Wednesday it had “neutralised” 44 Islamic State militants and wounded 117 as part of its operation in the northern Syrian town of al-Bab.

Rebels supported by Turkish troops have laid siege to al-Bab for weeks under an operation to sweep the Sunni hardliners and Kurdish fighters from its Syrian border.

(Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Denis Pinchuk in Moscow and Madeline Chambers in Berlin; writing by David Dolan; editing by Andrew Roche and John Stonestreet)

Turkey targets foster families in post-coup crackdown

A damaged window is pictured at the police headquarters in Ankara, Turkey,

* Authorities investigating foster families over coup

* May remove children from families who backed coup

* Rights groups, EU rattled by extent of post-coup crackdown

By Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Turkish authorities are investigating foster families for suspected ties to a failed coup and may remove children from homes if their guardians are found to be supporters of the putsch, a government official said on Monday.

The government has so far detained or dismissed 125,000 people over alleged links to the network of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the July 15 coup. Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the state of Pennsylvania, has denied involvement in the putsch and condemned it.

“It would not be right for a child to remain with a (foster) family if links to FETO are confirmed as a result of the examinations,” the official from the Ministry of Family and Social Policy told Reuters.

The official, who declined to be identified, said the investigations had been going on since August 23.

“This is a slow process in which detailed examinations are being carried out. So it is out of the question for children to be suddenly ripped away from their families,” the official said, adding that the psychological health of the children was being closely monitored.

INVESTIGATION

Around 5,000 foster families and some related institutions are being investigated, the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper reported. The government has also cut off cooperation with four childcare-related NGOs as part of its investigation, the newspaper said.

Last week European lawmakers voted for a temporary halt to EU membership talks with Turkey, citing Ankara’s “disproportionate” reaction to the coup over the past four months.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister said this month that Turkey’s handling of dismissed civil servants reminded him of methods used by the Nazis and that eventually the EU would have to respond with sanctions.

Such comments have infuriated Ankara, which has criticized Europe for a lack of solidarity following the coup. Erdogan last week warned the EU that Turkey could unleash a new wave of migrants on Europe if relations deteriorated further.

(Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by David Dolan and Gareth
Jones)

European lawmakers call for end to Turkey EU membership

A woman adjusts the Turkish flag next to the European Union flag at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels

By Alissa de Carbonnel

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – The leaders of the European Parliament’s two largest groups called on Tuesday for the European Union to halt membership talks with Turkey because of its post-coup purges.

“Our message to Turkey is very clear: accession negotiations should be frozen immediately,” said Manfred Weber, the head of the largest faction in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party.

He was echoed by Gianni Pitella, the leader of the socialist group, the parliament’s second biggest: “We want to freeze the accession talks.”

More than 110,000 people in Turkey – including soldiers, academics, judges, journalists and Kurdish leaders – have been suspended from their positions or dismissed over their alleged backing for the plotters of a failed military coup in July.

Some 36,000 have been arrested and media outlets have been shut.

“Turkey under Mr Erdogan is more and more drifting towards an authoritarian regime,” Pitella said, referring to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

“Our political message towards Turkey is that human rights, civil rights, democracy are non negotiable if you want to be part of the EU.

Erdogan, exasperated with the EU’s intensified criticism of his rights record, has said the bloc would have to “live with the consequences” should it stop the talks and that Ankara could instead join an security alliance run by Russia and China.

The post-coup crackdown has taken the EU aback, annulling a period of warmer tone between Turkey and the bloc, which had promised as recently as last March to speed up Ankara’s accession talks in exchange for its help in keeping migrants away from European shores.

This cooperation, critical for the EU, is still going on but some in the EU worry it could eventually fall victim to the spiraling recriminations.

Erdogan, who blames the EU for not showing enough understanding for the gravity of the situation in Turkey, said he could put the EU talks to a national referendum next year.

Turkey still hopes to win visa-free travel to the EU but earlier promises of granting the privilege to Ankara by the end of the year now seem distant.

Among EU countries, Austria and Luxembourg have led calls to stop Turkey’s membership talks, which have only made very limited progress over 11 years in any case.

But Germany, France and most of the other EU states for now back continued engagement and fear putting at risk Turkey’s collaboration on migration.

All stress, however, that the talks would come to an end should Turkey reinstate the death penalty.

(Additional reporting by Tom Koerkemeier, writing by Gabriela Baczynska Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

Turkey’s Erdogan says Germany has become ‘haven for terrorists’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, October 19, 2016. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Germany had become a haven for terrorists and would be “judged by history”, accusing it of failing to root out supporters of a U.S.-based cleric Ankara blames for July’s failed military coup.

Erdogan said Germany had long harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, and far-leftists from the DHKP-C, which has carried out armed attacks in Turkey.

“We are concerned that Germany, which has protected the PKK and DHKP-C for years, has become the backyard of the Gulenist terror organization,” Erdogan said, referring to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

“We don’t have any expectations from Germany but you will be judged in history for abetting terrorism … Germany has become an important haven for terrorists,” he told a ceremony at his palace in the capital Ankara.

Ankara blames Gulen for the coup attempt and has suspended or dismissed more than 110,000 of his suspected followers from the civil service, security forces and other institutions in a crackdown. Gulen has denied involvement in the putsch.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told reporters on Tuesday that he did not want to judge whether the Gulenist movement was political in nature or not. He also said Berlin would not extradite suspects if they faced political charges.

“That would certainly not happen,” he said. For any extradition to take place, there had to be firm indications of “classic criminal activity”.

Erdogan said he was concerned by Germany’s reluctance, and warned that “the menace of terrorism would come back and strike it like a boomerang.”

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

Turkey issues detention warrants for 137 more academics over failed coup

A Turkish special forces police officer guards the entrance of the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey,

NKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities issued arrest warrants for 137 academics on Wednesday over suspected links to the cleric who Ankara says orchestrated an attempted coup, CNN Turk reported, widening a crackdown that has worried rights groups and Western allies.

Turkey has formally arrested more than 37,000 people and has already sacked or suspended 100,000 civil servants, judges, prosecutors, police and others in an unprecedented purge.

The government says it is rooting out supporters of Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, from the state apparatus and other key positions.

Gulen has denied Ankara’s charges and denounced the July failed coup by rogue members of the military.

Among the latest suspects, 31 of them have already been detained and another 22 are believed to have fled abroad, CNN Turk said, citing the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office. The prosecutor’s office could not be reached for comment.

Over the weekend, Turkey dismissed more than 10,000 civil servants over alleged links to Gulen. Thousands of academics, teachers and health workers were among those removed through a new emergency rule decree published late on Saturday.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan and Richard Balmforth)

Iraq requests U.N. emergency meeting on Turkish troops in north

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, August 24, 2016.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq has requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations  Security Council to discuss the presence of Turkish troops on its territory as a dispute with Ankara escalates.

Turkey’s parliament voted last week to extend the deployment of an estimated 2,000 troops across northern Iraq by a year to combat “terrorist organizations” – a likely reference to Kurdish rebels as well as Islamic State.

Iraq condemned the vote, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warned Turkey risked triggering a regional war. On Wednesday, Ankara and Baghdad each summoned the other’s ambassador in protest at remarks from the other camp.

“The Iraqi foreign ministry has presented a request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to discuss the Turkish violation of Iraq’s territory and interference in its internal affairs,” said a statement on the ministry’s website.

Turkey says its military is in Iraq at the invitation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government, with which Ankara maintains solid ties. Baghdad says no such invitation was ever issued.

Most of the Turkish troops are at a base in Bashiqa, north of Mosul and close to Turkey’s border, where they are helping to train Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and Sunni fighters.

Tensions between Baghdad and Ankara have risen with expectations of an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces to retake Mosul, the last major Iraqi city under Islamic State control, captured by the militants two years ago.

Turkey has said the campaign will send a wave of refugees over its border, and potentially on to Europe.

Ankara also worries that Baghdad’s Shi’ite Muslim-led forces will destabilize Mosul’s largely Sunni population and worsen ethnic strife across the region, where there are also populations of Turkmens, ethnic kin of the Turks.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim echoed this worry again on Thursday, saying the presence of Ankara’s troops in Bashiqa will continue to ensure that the demographics of the region will not change. Iraq’s hostile reaction is  “incomprehensible”, he added.

However, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sought to play down the spat over Bashiqa in comments later on Thursday.

“We do not see a serious problem there and we think this  problem will be overcome,” he told a news conference with his Italian counterpart in Ankara. “Iraq must leave the rhetoric aside so we can assess how to resolve this subject.”

He said around 3,000 local fighters, Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen, were being trained against Islamic State at the camp and they had so far “neutralized” around 750 of the group’s militants in the area.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad, Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Turkish forces deepen push into Syria, draw U.S. rebuke

Turkish armoured personnel carriers drive towards the border in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, August 27,

By Lisa Barrington and Umit Bektas

BEIRUT/KARKAMIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish-backed forces pushed deeper into northern Syria on Monday and drew a rebuke from NATO ally the United States, which said it was concerned the battle for territory had shifted away from targeting Islamic State.

At the start of Turkey’s now almost week-long cross-border offensive, Turkish tanks, artillery and warplanes provided Syrian rebel allies the firepower to capture swiftly the Syrian frontier town of Jarablus from Islamic State militants.

Since then, Turkish forces have mainly pushed into areas controlled by forces aligned to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition that encompasses the Kurdish YPG militia and which has been backed by Washington to fight the jihadists.

A group monitoring the tangled, five-year-old conflict in Syria said 41 people were killed by Turkish air strikes as Turkish forces pushed south on Sunday. Turkey denied there were any civilian deaths, saying 25 Kurdish militants were killed.

“We want to make clear that we find these clashes – in areas where ISIL is not located – unacceptable and a source of deep concern,” said Brett McGurk, U.S special envoy for the fight against Islamic State, using an acronym for the jihadists.

“We call on all armed actors to stand down,” he wrote on his official Twitter account, citing a statement from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Turkey, which is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its soil, has said its campaign has a dual goal of “cleansing” the region of Islamic State and stopping Kurdish forces filling the void and extending the area they control near Turkey’s border.

That puts Ankara at odds with Washington and adds to tensions when Turkey’s government is still reeling from last month’s failed coup, which it says Washington was too slow to condemn. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sought to patch up ties in a visit last week, just as Turkish forces entered Syria.

“ETHNIC CLEANSING”

On Monday, Turkish-backed forces advanced on Manbij, a city about 30 km (20 miles) south of Turkey’s border captured this month by the SDF, in which Kurdish fighters play a major part, with U.S. help. The thud of artillery was heard in the Turkish border town of Karkamis.

SDF-aligned militia said they were reinforcing Manbij but insisted none of the troops in the region or the extra fighters heading to the city were from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Turkey has said its warplanes and artillery have bombarded positions held by the Kurdish YPG militia in recent days. It accuses the YPG of seeking to take territory where there has not traditionally been a strong Kurdish ethnic contingent.

“The YPG is engaged in ethnic cleansing, they are placing who they want to in those places,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara, demanding Kurdish forces withdraw east of the Euphrates river, a natural boundary with areas of eastern Syria under Kurdish control.

The YPG, a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia in the SDF that Washington sees as a reliable ally against jihadists in the Syrian conflict, have dismissed the Turkish allegation and say any forces west of the Euphrates have long since left.

“Turkey’s claims that it is fighting the YPG west of the Euphrates have no basis in truth and are merely flimsy pretexts to widen its occupation of Syrian land,” Redur Xelil, chief spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, told Reuters.

U.S. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the U.S. “reiterated our view that the YPG must cross back to the eastern side of the Euphrates and understand that has largely occurred.”

Turkish-backed forces say they have seized a string of villages south of Jarablus in a region controlled by groups aligned to the U.S.- and Kurdish-backed SDF. They also say they have taken a few places to the west in Islamic State areas.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s conflict, said Turkey-backed rebels had managed to seize at least 11 villages in 48 hours, bringing the total to at least 21 villages in the south and west Jarablus countryside captured since 25 August.

Syria’s conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Since then it has drawn in regional states and world powers, with a proliferation of rival rebel groups, militias and jihadists adding to the complexity.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, and Can Sezer, David Dolan and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Dominic Evans)

Turkey shakes up armed forces, U.S. says purges harming cooperation

Turkish soldiers detain Staff Sergeant Erkan Cikat, one of the missing military personnel suspected of being involved in the coup attempt, in Marmaris, Turkey

By Tulay Karadeniz and Seda Sezer

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected Western criticism of purges under way in Turkey’s military and other state institutions after a failed coup, suggesting some in the United States were on the side of the plotters.

The purges target supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the July 15-16 coup. Turkey’s Western allies condemned the coup, in which at least 246 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured, but they have been rattled by the scale of the crackdown.

The director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, said on Thursday the purges were harming the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by sweeping away Turkish officers who had worked closely with the United States.

The head of U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, said he believed some of the military figures whom the United States had worked with were in jail.

Speaking at a special forces headquarters in Ankara badly damaged by violence on the night of the coup, Erdogan on Friday condemned Votel’s remarks.

“Instead of thanking this country which repelled a coup attempt, you take the side of the coup plotters. The putschist is in your country already,” Erdogan said, referring to Gulen, who denies any involvement in the coup attempt.

“They (the critics) say … ‘we worry for (Turkey’s) future’. But what are these gentlemen worried about? Whether the numbers of detained and arrested will increase? If they are guilty, they will increase,” said Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture and possible death on the night of the coup.

Ankara wants Washington to extradite Gulen, once a close ally of Erdogan and now an arch foe, to Turkey.

Asked about the U.S. comments on losing Turkish interlocutors, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim echoed Erdogan’s feisty tone: “This is a confession. If the Gulenist generals are their friends, they are in the same class.”

Yildirim also said Turkey would shut down an air base near Ankara which served as a hub for the coup plotters as well as all military barracks used by them.

MILITARY SHAKE-UP

Turkey announced late on Thursday a major shake-up of its armed forces, NATO’s second largest, with the promotion of 99 colonels to the rank of general or admiral and the dishonorable discharge of nearly 1,700 military personnel over their alleged roles in the coup.

About 40 percent of all generals and admirals have been dismissed since the coup.

Defence Minister Fikri Isik told broadcaster NTV on Friday the shake-up in the military was not yet over, adding that military academies would now be a target of “cleansing”.

The purges have also hit government ministries, schools and universities, the police, civil service, media and business.

The number of public sector workers removed from their posts since the coup attempt now stands at more than 66,000, including some 43,000 people in education, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Friday.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala said more than 18,000 people had been detained over the failed coup, and that 50,000 passports had been canceled. The labor ministry said it was investigating 1,300 staff over their possible involvement.

Erdogan says Gulen harnessed his extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and abroad over decades, to create a secretive “parallel state” that aimed to take over the country.

Erdogan’s critics say he is using the purges to crack down indiscriminately on dissent and to tighten his grip on power.

With long land borders with Syria and Iraq, Turkey is a central part of the U.S.-led military operation against Islamic State. As home to millions of Syrian refugees, it is also the European Union’s partner in a deal reached last year to halt the biggest flow of migrants into Europe since World War Two.

Turkey hosts U.S. troops and warplanes at Incirlik Air Base, from which the United States flies sorties against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Those air operations were temporarily halted following the coup attempt.

Attempting to reassure the United States, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday that Turkey’s armed forces, “cleansed” of their Gulenist elements, would prove more “trustworthy … and effective” allies against Islamic State.

Nevertheless, there is a growing anti-U.S. mood in Turkey which is likely to harden further if Washington refuses to extradite Gulen.

Several hundred flag-waving protesters staged a peaceful protest march near the Incirlik base on Thursday, chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and “Damn the U.S.A”, the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper reported. The protesters burned a U.S. flag.

“POWER POISONING”

The crackdown on Gulenists pressed on unabated on Friday.

In the central city of Kayseri, a stronghold of Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party, police detained the chairman of furniture-to-cables conglomerate Boydak Holding and two company executives as part of the investigation into the “Gulenist Terror Group”,  Anadolu reported.

Prosecutors in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir issued orders to detain 200 police on Friday as part of the investigation targeting Gulenists, the Dogan news agency said.

In the Netherlands, a spokeswoman for the Gulenist community said supporters feared for their safety after dozens of death threats and acts of arson and vandalism in Dutch towns and cities in the past two weeks. Saniye Calkin said supporters in neighboring Germany were reporting similar incidents.

Germany is home to Europe’s largest Turkish diaspora, while the Netherlands also has around half a million ethnic Turks.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999, again maintained his innocence during an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, saying he had himself suffered from previous coups in Turkey.

Asked why his once-warm ties with Erdogan and the AK Party had turned sour, Gulen said: “It appears that after staying in power for too long, (they) are suffering from power poisoning.”

Gulen, whose Hizmet (Service) movement stresses the need to embrace scientific progress and inter-faith dialogue, said he still strongly backed Ankara’s bid to join the EU, saying this would buttress democracy and human rights in Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Steve Scherer in Rome, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Nick Tattersall)