BEIRUT // Turkey reacted angrily on Wednesday to Washington's decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters, saying the move helped bolster "terrorists" who pose a threat to the Turkish state.
It came a day after president Donald Trump approved a plan to supply weapons to the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria - Washington's most effective ally on the ground in the fight against ISIL.
But Nato ally Turkey says the YPG is an arm of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has been at war with the Turkish government since the 1980s.
Every weapon that ended up in YPG hands represented a threat to Turkey, its foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.
"Both the PKK and the YPG are terrorist organisations and they are no different, apart from their names. Every weapon seized by them is a threat to Turkey," he told reporters while on a visit to Montenegro.
Deputy prime minister Nurettin Canikli called on the US to reverse its decision, underlining that the YPG was a threat to Ankara.
"We cannot accept the presence of terrorist organisations that would threaten the future of the Turkish state," he said in a television interview on Wednesday. "We hope the US administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it. Such a policy will not be beneficial, you can't be in the same sack as terrorist organisations."
US support for the YPG has driven tensions between the two allies and Turkey has repeatedly called on the US to cut its support for the group and lean more heavily on Ankara and its Syrian rebel proxies in the fight against ISIL.
While Washington's announcement on Tuesday was the first time the US said it would give weapons to the YPG, Kurdish fighters in Syria have previously been spotted with American equipment.
The move comes just a week ahead of a trip by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Washington, where he is set to meet Mr Trump for the first time.
jwood@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting from Reuters
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