Turkey claims the US is 'playing with fire' over plans to set up a border force on the Syrian frontier.
Turkey has warned the US-led coalition is ‘playing with fire’ over its plan to set up a new border force made up of 30,000 of its Syrian militia allies.
Washington’s support for Kurdish-dominated forces in Syria has long angered Ankara.
"Just like we do not let the separatist terror organisation Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK operate within our borders, we are also determined to vanquish them on the other side of our border. God willing, in the coming days, we will continue the operation to purge our southern border from terror, for which the first step was taken with the Euphrates Shield military operation, with the Afrin region of Syria, which is under Kurdish control," Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Erdogan’s spokesman labelled the latest developments 'worrying' and 'unacceptable'.
A statement from the foreign ministry reiterated the sentiment and condemned the what it called the US’s persistently ‘incorrect’ approach, adding that it was 'determined and able to eliminate all kinds of threats'.
Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the civil war, has said 'a zone controlled by US-backed rebels' could lead to Syria being divided up.