Defense minister meets US envoy in Ankara

ANKARA

Defense Minister Yaşar Güler met with U.S. Ambassador to Ankara and special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, on July 28 as Türkiye continues its anti-terror initiative.

An X post shared by Türkiye's Defense Ministry included a photo from the reception but provided no further details.

The meeting comes amid the disarmament of PKK as part of Ankara's "terror-free Türkiye" process. The terror group declared a ceasefire following a call from its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and later announced plans to dissolve and disarm.

Turkish officials have stressed that the disarmament process should also apply to YPG.

PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union. Ankara also considers YPG as its Syrian extension.

Following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) signed an integration agreement with the country’s newly formed government.

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa met with SDF leader Mazloum Abdi on July 9 in the presence of Ambassador Barrack and a French representative to address stalled progress.

“I think SDF has been slow in accepting and negotiating and moving towards that, and my advice to them is to speed that,” Barrack said earlier this month.

“The difficulty is, in all of these countries, what we've learned is federalism doesn't work. You can't have independent non-nation states within a nation."

Barrack praised Damascus for being “incredibly enthusiastic in trying to onboard the SDF.”

At a press briefing at the Foreign Press Center in New York, he described the SDF as “YPG, a derivative of PKK,” and said the U.S. does not support the creation of a separate SDF state or “free Kurdistan” in Syria.

He said the Syrian government opposes federalism and has rejected dividing the country along ethnic or sectarian lines.

“You can't have a separate Druze force dressed like Druze, separate Alawite force dressed like Alawites, separate Kurd force dressed like Kurds, and on and on. There's going to be one entity,” he said.

The implementation of the integration deal has stalled, with the SDF demanding a decentralized governance model that Damascus continues to reject.

Barrack warned that unless the SDF acts swiftly on integration, it will face challenges from both the Turkish and Syrian governments.