President Erdogan: Turkey would accept to cooperate with peshmerga and FSA

Turkey has offered northern Iraqi peshmerga fighters passage into the besieged Syrian town of Kobani to help Syrian Kurdish fighters combat the ISIL, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday.

"I myself made that offer," Erdogan said in a press conference at Ankara Esenboga Airport before leaving for an official visit to Latvia. "And I already said that 'that aid that you would deliver to the PYD and PKK is unacceptable for us'."

The PKK is the Kurdistan Workers' Party, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and some other countries. It has waged a bloody 30-year campaign against the Turkish state. The PYD is the Unionist Democratic Party, which the Turkish government believes is in league with the PKK.

Questioning why Kobani is of such strategic importance for the US, President Erdoğan stated that there are no civilians left in the city as 200,000 civilians took refuge in Turkey.

"I have told US President Barack Obama that Turkey would accept to cooperate with peshmerga forces and the Free Syrian Army" said President Erdoğan, who expressed that some of the weapons airdropped by US forces to Kurdish fighters in Kobani accidentally fell in ISIL controlled areas, which was exposed by a video captured by ISIL militants. He stated that this incident has revealed that the airdrop of weapons by the US was wrong as a part of them were seized by the ISIL. 

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu's announcement that his country would help Iraqi Kurdish forces access Kobani through Turkey to help Kurdish militias fight the ISIL terrorist group came a day after the U.S. conducted airdrops in the northern Syrian town to resupply the Unionist Democratic Party. 

U.S. officials notified their Turkish counterparts in advance of the airdrops.

Anadolu Agency / Daily Sabah