, has said his fighters pose no threat to #Turkey or to the #Syrian state.){kind=link}
Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has said his fighters pose no threat to Turkey or to the Syrian state.
Abdi was speaking at a regional meeting in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where he said his group operates under the authority of the Syrian state and supports an agreement to place all military and security structures inside national institutions.
He asked Turkey not to view the Kurdish-led force as a danger and said integration into Syrian state structures would support stability along the border.
Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish groups that form the core of the SDF to be tied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey and its Western allies have designated as a terrorist organization.
Abdi’s remarks came hours before new fighting in eastern Raqqa in which the Syrian government and the SDF accused each other of opening fire along the front line.
The Syrian defense ministry said two government soldiers were killed when SDF units struck army positions near Maadan and briefly seized several posts.
It said government troops pushed the Kurdish-led fighters back and retook the positions.
The SDF said the clashes followed a series of drone attacks carried out by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters from sites held by factions aligned with the Syrian transitional government.
The group said it shot down two drones and recovered equipment that it said showed foreign ISIL militants operating from government-held positions.
The Syrian government denied any link to ISIL activity and said the Kurdish-led force carried out an unprovoked attack on its soldiers.
Talks between the SDF and the Syrian transitional government on integrating the Kurdish-led force into the Syrian military have slowed since a political agreement was reached in March.
The SDF wants to enter the national military as a unified command, while Syrian officials prefer to absorb fighters one by one into regular army units.