France 'cannot give lessons' over Syria, Turkey says

The warning from Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron told Ankara it would be a "real problem" if its intervention turned into an outright "invasion".

"France cannot give us lessons on this issue," Cavusoglu told reporters in televised comments.

"We are not France, which occupied Africa," he said referring to France's colonial past, AFP reported.

Turkey launched an offensive on January 20 against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and last week President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to expand the operation, hiking tensions with its NATO allies.

Washington has backed the YPG as a key secular ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group.

Cavusoglu said European leaders had initially expressed support for Turkey's campaign in Syria during talks with Ankara, but that they appeared to have changed their stance in public comments.

"Unfortunately Europeans are two-faced," he remarked.

Reacting to Macron's remarks, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that 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 said on Wednesday.

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