France warns Turkey over Syria invasion

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday said in an interview that he would have a "real problem" with Turkey's intervention against a Kurdish militia in Syria if it turned into an outright "invasion".

"If the operation became more than fighting a potential terrorist threat on the Turkish border and turns out to be an invasion operation, we would have a real problem with that," Macron told Le Figaro daily.

Turkey's 12-day cross-border offensive against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week threatened to expand, has strained relations with its Nato allies.

Ankara views the YPG as a terror organisation allied to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) inside Turkey but the US has been backing it as a key secular ally in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Reacting to Macron's remarks Turkish Prime Minister Binaldi Yildirim said any suggestion that Ankara had broader designs in Syria, beyond pushing the YPG back from the border, was "totally wrong".

"The whole world knows, or should know, that Turkey is not engaged in an invasion," he told reporters in Ankara.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday expressed "satisfaction" with the results of a Syria peace congress, the Kremlin said.

"The heads of state expressed satisfaction with the results of the Congress of Syrian National Dialogue held in Sochi on January 30," the Kremlin said in a statement.