ISTANBUL: Turkiye said on Wednesday it had killed 13 Kurdish militants in northern Syria and two in Iraq, a sign that Ankara has pressed on with its campaign against fighters, some with possible links to US allies, since Donald Trump took office in the White House last week.
The Turkish defense ministry said the Kurdish fighters it had “neutralized” in Syria belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Turkiye considers the PKK and YPG to be identical; the United States considers them separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main allies in Syria in the campaign against Islamic State.
Turkiye has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and has expressed hope that Trump would revise the policy inherited from the previous administration of President Joe Biden.
Tuesday’s report of major clashes was the second within days: Turkiye also reported having killed 13 Kurdish militants on Sunday.
Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad last month.
Turkiye has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG, must disarm or face a military intervention.
Under the Biden administration the United States has had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.

DAMASCUS: A Russian government delegation has arrived in Damascus for the first time since Moscow's ally President Bashar al-Assad was toppled, Russia's TASS state news agency reported on Tuesday.
The delegation, which is expected to hold talks with Syria's new rulers, includes Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Alexander Lavrentiev, the Kremlin's special envoy for Syria.

Russia was a longtime Assad ally and intervened militarily to help him recapture territory from rebels during the more than decade-long war that erupted in 2011 after his crackdown of protests against his rule.
But a lightning rebel offensive late last year pushed Assad to flee Damascus in December — first to the Russian-run Hmeimim Air Base in northern Syria then to Moscow.
Days later, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying that Russia’s contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — the Islamist rebel group that spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad — were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”
Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria — a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim base near the port city of Latakia.
But this month, Syria’s new administration canceled a contract with Russian firm STG Stroytransgaz to manage and operate the Tartous port, according to three Syrian businessmen and media reports.
The contract had been signed under Assad.
Syria’s interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, told Reuters in an interview in Damascus this month that negotiations were under way with Russia to determine the nature of the future relationship between the two states.
“We as a state are committed to the agreements that were present in the past but there may be some amendments in the negotiations that would achieve Syria’s interests,” Abu Qasra said.