No need to be pessimistic on Turkey-US ties under Trump: PM Yıldırım

Hande Fırat - ANKARA

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There is no need to be pessimistic about relations between Turkey and the United States under President Donald Trump, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has said, citing positive indications coming from the new administration on three expectations from Washington. 

“Our friends are continuing their works with the new administration. There is no need to be pessimistic. We have received positive indications in our first congratulatory messages,” Yıldırım told journalists in Ankara on Feb. 2. 

Yıldırım repeated that Turkey was demanding the extradition of Fethullah Gülen from the U.S., the end of Washington’s alliance with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and taking steps to fix anti-American feelings in Turkey.     

“[Our expectation] is to correct mistakes staged by the previous administration in efforts to fight terror and defeat DAESH [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] in Syria. What are these mistakes? PYD is an affiliation of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and now the SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces]. They are all the same,” he said.

Criticizing the U.S. for supplying armored vehicles to the PYD, Yıldırım repeated once again that the U.S. should stop cooperating with these groups. “Because it’s a terror organization. And it does not befit to a serious, big country like the U.S. that attaches great importance to anti-terror fight to move together with a terrorist organization in order to defeat another terror organization,” he said.