Tayyip Erdogan
© Murad Sezer / Reuters
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again accused the US of "supporting terrorists" in Syria. The leader said Washington should instead be supporting Turkey, as it is a fellow member of NATO.

"We are your NATO ally. How on Earth can you support terrorist organizations and not us? Are these terrorist organizations your NATO allies?" Erdogan said during a speech at the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) awards in Ankara on Thursday, as quoted by Anadolu news agency. "This is unacceptable."

He said that although Turkey has been calling on Western countries not to make any distinctions among terrorist organizations, "some countries, primarily the United States, have been supporting the terrorist organizations who massacre the innocent in the region," Turkish Minute reported.

Erdogan went on to warn that such terrorist organizations will also "eventually attack the nations that support them."

The president's statements aligned with those made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who said on Thursday that it is "clearly known" that the US had fed supplies to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers to be a terrorist group.

Erdogan's remarks come just two days after the leader said it is "very clear" the US-led coalition is supporting terrorist groups in Syria, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), citing "confirmed evidence."

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the claim that Washington is supporting IS is "ludicrous," but stated that it has been "supporting" the YPG and "other forces."

"We're mindful, of course, of some of the tensions that exist obviously between these Turkish-supported forces and the YPG and other forces that we've been supporting in that area, and those are tensions - again, that's the reason why we're working closely, having these discussions, and trying to coordinate with them," Toner said during a Tuesday press briefing.

The US embassy in Ankara stressed, however, that Washington had not supplied weapons or explosives to the YPG or the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) "period."



Comment: Interesting that Toner admits US supports the YPG yet the embassy denies this. The embassy is clearly lying:
Washington Post - December 28 2016

On the road to Raqqa:
At the heart of the issue is the U.S. military's policy of sending arms to the area controlled by the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Units, widely known as the YPG.

The decision has paid off so far. The YPG — which constitutes the Kurdish component of the SDF — has proved to be the United States' most effective military ally in Syria, and it has retaken vast swaths of territory.
The embassy statement denying weapon and ammunition support for the YPG is obviously a lie. That the U.S. provides and provided weapons and ammunition to the YPG since 2014 is definitely true.

The same U.S. Embassy statement also denied that the U.S. supports or supported ISIS aka DAESH:
The United States government is not supporting DAESH. The USG did not create or support DAESH in the past. Assertions the United States government is supporting DAESH are not true.
There are many indications and that the U.S. actively supported ISIS aka DAESH in at least in its early years.

In 2013 the Georgian Special Forces officer of Chechen heritage Abu Omar al-Shishani, who had had extensive U.S. military training, was the ISIS commander that led ISIS and the U.S. supported Free Syrian Army under U.S. paid FSA Colonel Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi in the capture of the Syrian Air Force base Menagh.

Who supplied and paid ISIS for that service?

Recent ISIS videos taken near al-Bab show ISIS attacks on Turkish Leopard 2A4 tanks with U.S. manufactured TOW anti-tank missiles. Those fell from the sky?

The statement by the U.S. Embassy in Turkey is easily proven to be an outright lie. Why the State Department believes it is smart to officially put out such blatant untruth is inconceivable. It surely does not add to the credibility of any of its other statements.

Erdogan's Tuesday statements came as he accused the US-led coalition of "failing to keep its promises" of pledging air support in the operation to liberate Al-Bab, a northern Syrian town which Kurdish groups have also been trying to seize, from IS.

Al-Bab lies south of the 20km buffer zone that Turkey initially said it wanted to establish when it launched Operation Euphrates Shield at the end of August. Taking it would advance Ankara's objective of separating the Kurdish-held territory in Afrin from the US-backed Kurds in Manbij and Kobani.