Says Turkey’s Erdogan; world must ‘re-evaluate’ sanctions to help rebuild Syria: UN

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday it was time to destroy "terrorist" groups that posed a threat to Syria's survival, namely the Islamic State group jihadists and Kurdish fighters.

"Daesh, the PKK and their affiliates -- which threaten the survival of Syria -- must be eradicated," he told journalists while returning from a Cairo summit, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"It's time to neutralise the existing terrorist organisations in Syria."

Meanwhile, two journalists from Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast have been killed, reportedly by a Turkish drone, while covering the fighting between an Ankara-backed militia and US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, journalists' groups said yesterday.

Turkey views the Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) as a terror organisation because it is dominated by the YPG, a Kurdish group it says is linked to PKK militants who have fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.

But the US-backed force led the fight against the Islamic State group jihadists in Syria in 2019, with the SDF seen by the US as a "crucial" to prevent a jihadist resurgence in the area.

Erdogan said his government was taking "preventive measures" against groups that posed a threat to Turkey. "It is impossible for us to accept such a risk," he said, expressing hope Syria's new leaders would not opt to work with them.

"We do not think any power will continue to work with terrorist organisations in the upcoming period," he said.

"The heads of terrorist organisations such as IS and PKK-YPG ... will be crushed in the shortest time possible," he warned. Erdogan also said his top diplomat Hakan Fidan would visit Damascus soon, following in the footsteps of spy chief Ibrahim Kalin who went there just four days after Assad's fall and met with HTS leadership.

Meanwhile, the head of the UN's migration agency said yesterday that the raft of international sanctions on Syria must be reassessed to help the country rebuild following the ousting of Assad.