Ankara, Feb 2 (EFE).- The Turkish government once again accused the United States of “feeding” terrorism for supporting Kurdish groups in northern Syria and stated that the West does not want Turkey to be “independent”.
“We know who feeds the terrorist organizations. It is the United States that feeds the PKK/PYD,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, using the respective acronyms for the Kurdish guerrillas active in Turkey and Syrian Kurdish militias.
While the former are considered terrorists by the European Union and the United States, the latter are allies of Washington in its fight against the jihadist Islamic State.
Soylu said that the United States and the West “have spent years feeding money, logistics and human resources” to these groups, which Ankara considers branches of the same organization.
The minister said that the United States has not given up on its dream of establishing a “terrorist state” on the Turkish border, referring to the creation of an autonomous Kurdish nation.
He also claimed that the United States is the one who “built” the terrorist group Al Qaeda.
The minister also affirmed that the closure of consulates and European institutions in Istanbul in recent days, under the argument of terrorist threat, responds only to a strategy of “psychological war against Turkey” that is being carried out by “ambassadors”, without specifying who was referring
“The US and the West do not want us to be independent and free in this region,” the minister said, noting that those closures come as Turkey has set a goal of receiving 60 million tourists this year.
Several Western countries, including Spain, yesterday warned their citizens residing in Turkey of the high risk of an attack in Istanbul, in relation to the burning of copies of the Koran in some European countries by far-right groups.
Faced with this threat, consular offices and cultural institutions in Istanbul, such as the Cervantes Institute, have been temporarily closed. EFE
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