US denies providing helicopter piloting training to SDF partners in Syria

ANKARA (AA) – The US has denied providing helicopter piloting training to SDF partners in Syria after a helicopter carrying PKK members crashed in northern Iraq.

Following the crash of a helicopter carrying PKK members in northern Iraq, the questions of how the helicopter ended up in the hands of the PKK and the source of the training and weapons assistance to the organization’s affiliate in Syria, remained to be answered.

“Today a helicopter, a mysterious helicopter was crashed — crashed in Northern Iraq and it came out that it was carrying PKK elements. My question is, does the United States provide helicopter piloting training to SDF partners in Syria or not?” journalists asked during a news conference on Thursday.

“I — not to my knowledge. No. We do not. Thank you,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.

The Anti-Terrorism Unit of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) issued a statement on their official Facebook page in response to the helicopter crash in Duhok.

The statement said the relevant institutions alerted the Iraqi central government, international coalition forces, and Türkiye about the crashed helicopter, “although it was later revealed that it did not belong to them.” The security forces started a preliminary inquiry into the helicopter, and the initial results showed it was a Eurocopter AS350 model, and that some of the dead were PKK terrorists, while a thorough inquiry is ongoing to discover who owns the helicopter, it added.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense said the allegations in various social media posts, claiming that a Turkish Armed Forces helicopter crashed in northern Iraq, did not reflect the truth.

The PKK or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party is a Kurdish nationalist group. The Syrian Defence Force (SDF) is the PKK’s affiliate in Syria.