ANKARA: Turkiye will directly intervene to stop any attempt to fragment Syria and will prevent any attempts by fighters to obtain autonomy after clashes in southern Syria, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday.

His warning against fragmentation, in comments to reporters in Ankara, appeared aimed at Israel as Turkiye considers this to be Israel’s ultimate aim in Syria. Turkiye has condemned Israeli strikes on Damascus last week as an attempt to sabotage Syria’s efforts to establish peace and security, and sees clashes between Druze fighters and Syrian Bedouin tribes in the southern province of Sweida as part of an Israeli policy of regional destabilisation.

Nato member Turkiye supports Syria’s new government and has called for a ceasefire between the Bedouin and Druze fighters. Fidan said Israel wanted a divided Syria to make the country unstable, weaker and a liability to the region, and added that Kurdish YPG militants were looking to take advantage of the chaos. “God willing, we will prevent this policy from being realised,” he said.

In an apparent reference to the YPG, he said groups in Syria should not see such chaos as a tactical opportunity to achieve autonomy or independence within Syria and that they faced “a big strategic catastrophe”. “This leads nowhere,” he said.

Ankara sees the YPG, which spearheads the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, as a terrorist organisation, and has carried out several cross-border operations against them. “We are warning you: no group should engage in acts towards division,” Fidan said.

He said many issues could be discussed via diplomacy “but if you go beyond this and seek fragmentation and destabilising we will consider this a direct threat to our security and intervene.”

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2025