January 19, 2019•Update: January 20, 2019
By S. Ahmet Aytac
ANKARA
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Saturday rejected the accusations of former U.S. special presidential envoy against Turkey.
“Your analysis is flawed. Your accusations against Turkey are complete nonsense, only a repetition of PKK propaganda,” Kalin said in a Twitter post.
Brett McGurk, who served as special envoy for the U.S.-led coalition against Daesh for three years, resigned last December following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria.
McGurk shared his Washington Post article titled “Trump said he beat ISIS. Instead, he’s giving it new life" on Twitter Friday night, urging Trump "to reverse orders to withdraw and reassess".
Regarding McGurk's anti-Turkey discourse in the article, Kalin tweeted, "Turkey has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and others."
"You want to give new life to PKK. Won’t happen,” Kalin wrote.
Turkey's Ambassador in Washington Serdar Kilic also took Twitter to react to McGurk’s remarks.
“One should have a nerve to accuse others for the challenges in Syria, when actually he is the one who has mislead the consecutive US Administrations and created these problems for all of us.
"His welcome departure will help us prevent further disasters in Syria,” Kilic wrote on Twitter.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of some 40,000 people. The YPG/PYD is the group's Syrian branch.
The U.S. withdrawal comes on the eve of a possible Turk
