Mazloum Abdi: Erdogan can do anything to reach power again

Mazloum Abdi: Erdogan can do anything to reach power again
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Commenting on a recent Turkish drone strike that targeted him and Ilham Ahmed in KRI, Mazloum Abdi has said the Turkish president is trying to mobilize his nationalist base for an election victory.

Commander-in-Chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said while commenting on a suspected Turkish air strike which targeted him two days earlier that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to mobilize his nationalist base for a win in the coming elections on 14 May, and that Erdogan "can do anything to reach power again."

SDF's top commander Mazloum Abdi (Kobane) was reportedly traveling to Sulaymaniyah airport in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) to board a plane belonging to the US military to carry him back to northeast Syria when he was targeted by a drone strike, according to Al Monitor. Ilham Ahmed, the head of the Syrian Democratic Council, a top governing body in the Kurdish controlled region in Syria, was with him when the drone struck the airport perimeter.

Abdi told Al Monitor's Amberin Zaman: "Yes, the attack took place near a convoy that was taking us to the airport."

He noted that this was not the first time that Turkey had tried to kill him.

"There were previous attempts by the Turkish state, the latest of which was the attack that targeted the headquarters of the counter-terrorism forces affiliated with our forces in al-Hasakah," he said, referring to a Turkish drone strike in November on a base used jointly by the SDF and US-led coalition forces where Abdi holds meetings with foreign officials and members of the international media.

He added that he was in Sulaymaniyah on routine US-led coalition business "within the framework of a joint program to fight the Islamic State group."

He went on to say that "Turkey plans to destabilize the region, encroach on its security and create chaos permanently," and speculated that President Erdogan was deliberately sowing conflict to help clinch victory by mobilizing his nationalist base in the run up to the elections on 14 May.

"He can do anything to reach power again," he stressed, adding that Turkey was "constantly seizing any opportunity to strike at our partnership with the international coalition led by America."