Turkey says it hopes US will end cooperation with Syrian Kurdish militia

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — A U.S. service member oversees members of the Syrian Democratic Forces as they raise a Tal Abyad Military Council flag, 2019. (Reuters)

DOHA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Sunday he hoped President Donald Trump would end U.S. cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish YPG, as Turkey continued its military campaign against the group, killing 23 of its fighters.

The Turkish Defence Ministry said the 23 militants killed by Turkey's armed forces in northern Syria belonged to the YPG militia and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Turkey regards the PKK and YPG as identical, while the United States views them as separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main ally in Syria in the campaign against Islamic State.

"We hope that Mr. Trump will make a decision that will put an end to this ongoing mistake in the region," Fidan told a press conference in Doha with his Qatari counterpart.

He said the YPG was incapable of fighting Islamic State and only played a role in keeping the group's prisoners in jail, adding that Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Jordan had held preliminary talks on fighting Islamic State.

Turkey has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in December.

Turkey has said the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF - a U.S.-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG - must disarm or face military intervention.

Under the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, the United States had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.

 (Reporting by Andrew Mills in Doha and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Helen Popper)