Turkey is ready to provide military support to Syria's new Islamist-led government set up by rebels who overthrew Bashar al-Assad if it requests it, Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on Sunday.
He said the new leadership should be given "a chance" and that Turkey was "ready to provide the necessary support if the new administration requests it", in remarks to journalists reported by state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.
"It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance," Guler said of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebel alliance, which is rooted in Al-Qaeda's Syria branch and designated a "terrorist" organisation by many Western governments.
But HTS has sought to moderate its rhetoric and its transitional government has insisted the rights of all Syrians would be protected along with the rule of law.
The new administration, Guler said, had pledged to "respect all government institutions, the UN and other international organisations" and promised to report any evidence of chemical weapons to the OPCW watchdog.
Kurdish question
Turkey's top priority in Syria was to rid the country of Kurdish separatist fighters -- a goal which was supported by the new government, Guler said.
"In this new period, the PKK/YPG terrorist organisation will be eliminated in Syria, sooner or later. Both we and the new administration in Syria want this," he said.
"We have no problems with our Kurdish brothers living in Iraq and Syria. Our problem is only and exclusively with terrorists."
The YPG (Syrian Kurdish People's Defence Units) makes up the bulk of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), a key US ally that defeated the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of its domestic nemesis, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
By extension, it sees the SDF as a terror outfit, setting it sharply at odds with Washington, which has called the group "crucial" for preventing a resurgence of IS group jihadists in Syria.
"Our priority (in Syria) is the liquidation of the PKK/YPG terrorist organisation," Guler said.
"We have expressed this to our American friends. We expect them to re-evaluate their positions."
7,600 Syrians returned via Turkish border
Meanwhile, more than 7,600 Syrian migrants crossed the Turkish border to return home in the five days after the fall Assad, Turkey's interior minister said Sunday.
In a statement on X, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya listed the total number of Syrians "who returned voluntarily from Turkey" each day between December 9 and 13, with the five-day figure totalling 7,621 migrants.
Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011, with the fall of Assad raising hopes many would return home.
Early on Monday, AFP correspondents saw hundreds of refugees massing at the Cilvegozu border crossing some 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Aleppo, Syria's second city, with interior ministry figures showing 1,259 crossed that day.
Another 1,669 crossed on Tuesday, 1,293 on Wednesday, 1,553 on Thursday and 1,847 on Friday, Yerlikaya said.
Within 48 hours of Assad's fall, Turkey had increased its daily crossing capacity from 3,000 to between 15,000 to 20,000, Yerlikaya said earlier this week.
Turkey shares a 900-kilometre (560-mile) border with Syria with five operational crossings, and has said it would open a sixth in the far west to "ease the traffic".
With anti-Syrian sentiment running high within Turkish society, Ankara is keen to see as many refugees as possible return to their homeland.
Around 1.24 million -- some 42 percent -- of them hail from the Aleppo region, the interior ministry has said.
With AFP
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