President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said Turkey would never allow a Kurdish state in Syria near its border, and warned that if threatened, Ankara would not hesitate to use its right to self-defence. "We will never remain silent or unresponsive to the backing and arming of terrorist groups, and the formation of terror islets right next to our border," Erdogan said in a speech at the closing session of the G20 summit in Hamburg. Ankara considers the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighting in Syria to be a terrorist group and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.



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