Celebrations Take Over Damascus Square – DW – 12/13/2024

12/13/2024December 13, 2024

Stopping IS resurgence in Syria vital, US and Turkey say

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said it was “imperative” to prevent the so-called “Islamic State” group (IS) from exploiting the situation in Syria to regain dominance, in comments echoed by his Turkish counterpart.

“Our country worked very hard and gave a lot over many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS (IS), to ensure that that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” Blinken said at a joint press conference in Ankara.

“And it’s imperative that we keep at those efforts.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in AnkaraImage: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/AP/dpa/picture alliance

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in response that Turkey’s “priorities include ensuring stability in Syria as soon as possible, preventing terrorism from gaining ground, and preventing ISIS and the PKK from dominating there.”

PKK is the acronym for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against Turkey and is classified a terrorist organization by Ankara, the United States and the European Union, among others.

However, the PKK’s sister organization in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not considered a terrorist organization by the US or the EU.

IS captured large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in a lightning offensive in 2014, calling the areas it controlled a “caliphate.”

It however lost the Middle Eastern territories it held by 2019 after years of fighting against American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, and has since carried out relatively minor acts of insurgency from remote hideouts.

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