MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Clinton said during Sunday's televised debate she supported arming Kurdish militias in their fight against Daesh in Syria, something that the White House was already considering.
“This is a very unfortunate statement. I regard this as political inexperience,” Erdogan said as quoted by the Hurriyet Daily News media outlet.
On Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and the chair of the ruling Turkish AKP party’s parliamentary group Mustafa Elitas also condemned Clinton for her remarks on arming Kurds by questioning Washington's tactic of fighting terrorists with terrorists and saying that such a move would be considered as an act of US hostility toward Turkey.
The United States regards Turkey as a key ally in the region and is using its military base to launch airstrikes on positions of the Daesh, a jihadist group outlawed in Russia, in northern Syria. At the same time, the US government is backing Syrian Kurds, whom Ankara considers linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) active in southern Turkey and outlawed by Ankara.
