Kobane aid triggers Turkey-US debate

Washington took the initiative to airdrop ammunition and weapons to Kurdish fighters battling jihadists in Kobane despite Turkey’s objections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, in a bid to underline that Ankara does not consider the Democratic Union Party (PYD) a legitimate counterpart, regardless of U.S. views.

“Did Turkey view this business positively? No it didn’t. America did this in spite of Turkey, and I told [Obama] that Kobane is not currently a strategic place for you; if anything, it is strategic for us,” Erdoğan said during a news conference in Riga on Oct. 23, referring to his latest telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama that took place at the latter's initiative on Oct. 19.

The Turkish government views the PYD with deep suspicion because of its ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and has previously turned down requests for it to open a land corridor so that Kobane could be resupplied from other Kurdish areas of northern Syria.

“I told him that the PYD is in the same situation as the PKK. I said ‘[The PYD] is also a terrorist organization,’” Erdoğan said.

He added that he stressed to Obama that the U.S. aid to the PYD was going to a terrorist organization and that there were PKK leaders among the PYD militants fighting against the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Erdoğan also repeated his argument that reports that some airdropped supplies ended up in the hands of jihadist militants proved that his objections were right.

In response to earlier statements by Erdoğan, the U.S. capital has already said the PYD’s legal situation in the United States was different than that of the PKK, which is on its list of Foreign Terrorist...