YPG/PKK committed war crimes in Syria: Turkish official

With the ongoing Operation Peace Spring, Turkey intends to allow the people -- who were brutalized by the PKK -- to return to their homes, said Turkish communications director on Saturday.

"Amnesty International found that the YPG/PKK had burned down entire Arab villages, 'displacing their inhabitants with no justifiable military grounds'. These are war crimes," Altun wrote on Twitter.

Touching on the YPG/PKK terror group's "demographic engineering", Altun said that when YPG/PKK took over Tel Rifaat district, they expelled over 200,000 Arabs from the region.

"The YPG/PKK holds hundreds of Kurdish political opponents and journalists in prison. They have killed more than 40 Syrian Kurdish political officials. And they have driven the rest of the Kurdish democrats into exile," he added.

He went on to say that, many Kurds who came to Turkey from Syria will soon be able to return to their country, when the region is cleared of PKK/YPG terrorists.

"Despite the fact there was no war in "Rojava" and the YPG/PKK's old friend, Assad, never bombed their areas, half-a-million Kurds fled because the repression was so extreme," he added.

Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria on Wednesday to secure its borders by eliminating terrorists there and to ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees and Syria's territorial integrity.

Ankara wants to clear the region east of the Euphrates River of the terrorist PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the PYD/YPG.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union -- has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.