Tag Archives: Militia

Turkey wants U.S. envoy on Islamic State removed over Kurdish policy

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a statement to reporters alongside U.S President Donald Trump after their meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday the U.S. special envoy in the battle against Islamic State should be removed because he supported Kurdish militants, and warned that Ankara would act unilaterally if it faced attack from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

The comments, which followed a White House meeting on Tuesday between President Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump, reflected Turkish anger at Trump’s decision to arm YPG fighters who are part of a force aiming to recapture the Islamic State-held Syrian city of Raqqa.

Ankara regards the YPG militia as an extension of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants fighting a decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey, while Washington sees the YPG as its most reliable ally for the Raqqa campaign.

Turkey has long complained that U.S. policy against Islamic State in Syria has favored the YPG over Arab rebel forces, a policy that Turkish officials believe is driven partly by Washington’s envoy to the international coalition against the jihadist group.

“Brett McGurk, the USA’s special envoy in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State), is definitely and clearly giving support to the PKK and YPG. It would be beneficial if this person is changed,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told NTV television.

The United States and the European Union, along with Turkey, designate the PKK a terrorist organization.

Erdogan, speaking to reporters at the Turkish embassy in Washington after the talks with Trump, said he told the U.S. president that Turkey would not hesitate to strike if it faced any sort of attack from the YPG, Turkish media reported.

“We clearly told them this: if there is any sort of attack from the YPG and PYD against Turkey, we will implement the rules of engagement without asking anyone,” Sabah newspaper cited him as saying. The PYD is the YPG’s political arm.

Erdogan did not specify what measures he might order, but said Turkey had shown its fighting capabilities when Turkish forces and Syrian rebels seized territory in northern Syria last year, pushing back Islamic State fighters and prompting a limited withdrawal of the YPG militia.

“Indeed we did this in Rai, Jarablus, al-Bab. Turkey showed what it can do,” Erdogan said. “We will not give terrorist groups breathing space domestically or abroad.”

TENSIONS WITH ALLIES

Cavusoglu said Trump had understood Turkey’s position, and did not challenge Erdogan when the Turkish president set out his possible response to the YPG.

Last month, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish fighters in Iraq’s Sinjar region and YPG militia in Syria, drawing rebuke from Washington which voiced concern over the air strikes and said they harmed the coalition’s fight against Islamic State.

Erdogan said that the United States had made its decision on conducting the Raqqa operation – despite Ankara’s opposition – and that Turkey could not participate given the YPG involvement.

“We told them … we do not regard your cooperation with a terrorist group in Raqqa as healthy,” he was cited as saying.

But he said he expected a role for Turkey in Syria, and repeated Turkey’s assertion that once Raqqa was retaken from Islamic State, Kurdish forces could not be left in control of an Arab city. “I believe they will knock on our door on the subject of Syria,” he said.

The tensions with Washington over the YPG come as Turkey’s relations with the European Union, and Germany in particular, have also deteriorated.

Turkey has prevented German parliamentarians visiting its Incirlik airbase, where 250 German troops are based as part of a mission which includes German surveillance planes supporting the campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday the German government had been evaluating possible alternatives to Incirlik and was considering moving the troops to Jordan.

(Additional reporting by David Dolan; Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton)

Self-styled militia group joins Oregon occupation, could raise tensions

BURNS, Ore. (Reuters) – Several members of self-described militia groups have joined armed protesters occupying the headquarters of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, threatening to raise tensions in the week-long siege over land rights.

One of those organizations, the Pacific Patriots Network, issued a “call to action” for its members to establish a safety perimeter around the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in remote southeastern Oregon as leaders of the protest again said they had no immediate plans to leave.

“We wish to establish a safety perimeter of protection for the occupiers so as to prevent a Waco-style situation from unfolding during this peaceful occupation,” leaders of the group said in a statement posted on its website.

“That’s really the point of militias: it’s community involvement,” Brandon Rapolla, a member of Pacific Patriot Network, told Reuters in an interview near a building being used by Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan, to run the occupation. “If something happens in your community, that’s what militias are for.”

The Pacific Patriot Network earlier in the standoff said it did not support seizing federal property.

In 1993 federal agents laid siege to a compound in Waco, Texas, being held by the Branch Davidians religious group for 51 days before the standoff ended in a gun battle and fire in April of that year. Four federal agents and more than 80 members of the group died, including 23 children.

Some two dozen armed protesters have occupied the headquarters of the refuge since last Saturday, marking the latest incident in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of land and resources in the U.S. West.

The move followed a demonstration in support of two local ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven, who were returned to prison earlier this week for setting fires that spread to federal land.

A lawyer for Hammond family has said that the occupiers do not speak for the family.

Ammon Bundy met briefly with Harney County Sheriff David Ward on Thursday but rejected the lawman’s offer of safe passage out of the state to end the standoff.

During a press conference on Friday morning, Bundy seemed to soften his position slightly, saying: “We will take that offer but not yet and we will go out of this county and out of this state as free.”

Both Bundy and the sheriff have said that the two sides would talk again on Friday.

Following Bundy’s press conference on Friday morning a lands right activist opposed to the occupation spoke to the media.

“This is about furthering an extremist right-wing agenda,” Barrett Kaiser, a Montana resident and a representative of the Center for Western Priorities, said angrily, as supporters of Bundy tried to interrupt him and argue with him. “They need to be charged and prosecuted.”

Local residents have expressed a mixture of sympathy for the Hammond family, suspicion of the federal government’s motives and frustration with the occupation.

The leaders of the armed occupation are Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy. Their father, Cliven Bundy, along with a band of armed men, stared down federal agents trying to seize his livestock in Nevada in 2014. Many of the other occupiers also are from outside Oregon.

The Bundys say they want the federal government to turn over its land holdings in the area to local authorities and that they will leave after they have accomplished their goal.

Federal law enforcement agents and local police have so far kept away from the occupied site, maintaining no visible presence outside the park in a bid to avoid a violent confrontation.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Burns, Oregon; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Iraq Special Forces Advance on Tikrit

Iraqi Special Forces are advancing on Tikrit, driving out the terrorist group ISIS from what had been considered a major win for the terrorists.

The advance has been assisted by the U.S. airstrikes against key parts of the terrorist’s defense network within the city.  The attacks were the first major air assault by U.S. forces in several weeks.

“The Iraqi and coalition air forces conduct strikes in order to remove the enemy and then our forces advance,” said General Tahsin Ibrahim Sadiq. “When the attacking forces advance, they clear any pockets of resistance and allow for the rest of our forces to move in and barricade further ahead.”

Officials say the airstrikes are also targeting ISIS leadership’s command locations.

More than 20,000 Iraqi troops and paramilitary groups are involved in the Tikrit offensive.

The assault came as two Shi’ite militias withdrew from the battle because the United States demanded that Iranian officials and Iranian troops withdraw from the battle.  The militias are protesting that U.S. is forbidding Iranian involvement.