ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The Speaker of Turkey’s National Assembly on Saturday described a now week-long military offensive against US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria’s Afrin as “jihad.”

Speaker Ismail Kahraman’s use of the Islamic definition of “holy war” came amid rising religious rhetoric from the government circles targeting Kurdish political parties and the larger Kurdish movement in Syria and Turkey as well.

“Look, we are now in Afrin. We are a big state. Without jihad, there can be no progress, one cannot stand on their feet,” Kahraman said, praising the campaign against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that the US trained and armed in the war on the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

He was also critical of the US military presence in the Middle East and elsewhere globally, in his remarks aired on the state TV.

Kahraman had created a heated debate in 2016 when he told a convention of Muslim scholars that secularism would have no place in a new constitution for the country.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, later in the day, said the YPG, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as IS had no “religion, faith, or God.”

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