19 January 2018•Update: 20 January 2018
By Ali Kemal Akan, Cansu Dikme
ANKARA
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday Turkey would not tolerate any threats to its national security.
“Any formation that threatens the national security of Turkey will never be tolerated. This is our natural right. It is a right as part of international law and Turkish law as well,” Yildirim said during a speech at a vehicle delivery ceremony at the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD) in capital Ankara.
He added that Turkey’s aim is to eradicate terror in the region, referring to Syria.
Turkey is mulling over a possible operation in Afrin, a besieged city in northern Syria, to prevent a "terror corridor" from forming along its border.
Last week, Turkish security forces hit several PYD/PKK targets in Afrin.
An Afrin operation will follow Turkey's successful seven-month Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria, which ended in March 2017.
On Sunday the U.S.-led coalition in Syria controversially announced it was working with the SDF -- a group dominated by the terrorist PYD/PKK -- to set up and train a Syrian border protection force.
Turkey has long protested U.S. support for the PYD/PKK, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group, and its military wing the YPG, while Washington has called it a "reliable ally" in its fight against Daesh in Syria.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU, the PKK has waged a terror campaign against Turkey for more than 30 years, killing nearly 40,000 people.
Yildirim said Turkey had reached out to those areas in the world which nobody extended a helping hand to, with support from AFAD, the Turkish Red Crescent and the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).
As a governmental organization, AFAD carries out numerous campaigns in the world. Among its latest campaigns is putting up 515 tents in Idlib's Kelbit village with the support from the Turkish Red Crescent.
It also plans to build prefabricated houses in Bangladesh for 125,000 Rohingya Muslims, together with the Turkish Red Crescent, in 2018.
Since Aug. 25, 2017, some 650,000 refugees, mostly children and women, fled Myanmar when Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community, according to the UN. At least 9,000 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state from Aug. 25 to Sept. 24, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Separately, among the Turkey’s public institutions, AFAD, along with TIKA have provided about $243 million to Palestine since 2013.
