Syria must never be divided again, and Turkey will act against anyone seeking to compromise its territory, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.
“From now on, we cannot allow Syria to be divided again,” said the Turkish leader, speaking as neighbouring Syria embarked on a fraught period of uncertainty following the ouster of long-time president Bashar al-Assad.
“Any attack on the freedom of the Syrian people, the stability of the new administration, and the integrity of its lands will find us standing against it.”
Turkey has long worked to prevent Kurdish separatists from extending their influence in Syria, where they have dominated a large northeastern area since 2012.
Ankara sees the Kurdish forces, notably the militant group YPG, as an extension of the banned PKK, which has fought a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state since the 1980s.
On Sunday, Turkey’s top diplomat, Hakan Fidan, warned Kurdish fighters not to try to extend their influence in Syria by “taking advantage of the situation” created by Assad’s ouster by Islamist-led rebels.
Over the past 10 days, Turkish-backed forces in northern Syria have fought an offensive in the north, seizing several Kurdish-held areas.
Turkey has also denounced Israel for expanding into Syrian territory after its troops entered a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights following Assad’s ouster, reiterating its support for Syria’s “territorial integrity”.
“In this sensitive period, when the possibility of achieving the peace and stability that the Syrian people have desired for many years has emerged, Israel is once again displaying its occupying mentality,” Ankara said in a statement.
The Golan Heights is a mountainous plateau at Syria’s southwestern edge, most of which was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed.
It is separated from the Syrian side by the UN-patrolled buffer zone.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons”.