Crowd in Ankara protests US support to YPG as FM Çavuşoğlu meets Tillerson

ANKARA

Dozens of demonstrators have marched to a building where top United States and Turkish diplomats are seeking to ease some of the worst tensions in years between the two NATO allies on Feb. 16. 

The group, waving Turkish flags, protested U.S. support to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu in Ankara on the same day.

Turkey has been enraged by U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group, which Ankara sees as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting the Turkish state for decades and is also considered a terror network by the U.S.

Turkey’s military last month launched “Operation Olive Branch” in Syrias’s northwestern Afrin district, in a bid to clear the YPG from its southern border. It has also threatened to press on to the Syrian town of Manbij - currently under the control of a YPG-led force - and has warned American troops stationed there not to get in the way.