Kurdish soldiers in Syria will be buried if they don’t lay down their arms, Turkey’s Erdogan said.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Kurdish militants in Syria would either lay down their arms or be “buried”, amid clashes between Turkish-backed Syrian forces and militias since the fall of Bashar al-Assad this month. .

After Assad’s departure, Ankara has repeatedly insisted that the Kurdish YPG militia must disband, saying the group has no place in Syria’s future. The change in Syria’s leadership has left the country’s main Kurdish groups reeling.

“Different killers will say goodbye to their weapons, or they will be buried in Syrian lands along with their weapons,” Erdogan told lawmakers of his ruling AK Party in parliament.

“We will completely destroy the terrorist organization that is trying to weave a wall of blood between us and our Kurdish brothers and sisters,” he added.

Turkey views the Kurdish YPG militia – the main component of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has rebelled against the Turkish government since 1984.

The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Ankara has repeatedly asked its NATO ally Washington and others to stop supporting the YPG.

Earlier, the Turkish Ministry of Defense said that the military killed 21 YPG-PKK fighters in northern Syria and Iraq.

In an interview with Reuters last week, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi acknowledged the presence of PKK forces in Syria for the first time, saying that they have helped fight the Islamic State and will return home if there is a full agreement with Turkey, which is a key demand from Ankara.

He denied any association with the PKK.

Erdogan also said that Turkey will soon open its embassy in Aleppo, and added that Ankara expects an increase in traffic at its borders in the summer of next year, as some of the millions of Syrian refugees it hosts begin to return.

(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)