German Foreign Minister Analena Berbock is warning Turkey about the possibility of an escalation of its conflict with Kurdish forces in northern Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

A Turkish war against the Kurds in Syria “should not take place,” Annalena Berbok told Deutschlandfunk radio network.

“It would help no one” if the jihadist group Islamic State “benefits from the conflict” between Turkey and the Kurds, she said, adding that “it would be dangerous for the security of Syria, but also for Turkey, for us, for Europe.”

Since the fall of the al-Assad regime on December 8, Angara has supported an offensive by armed pro-Turkish militias against Kurdish forces controlling part of northern Syria.

Ankara considers the Syrian Democratic Forces and their core, US-backed People’s Protection Units (PPUs) a wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Syrian Democratic Forces are critical to preventing the revival of the Islamic State in Syria, US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, had said in mid-December.

The German foreign minister recalled that the Kurds had repelled “Islamic State terrorists” who had committed “horrific massacres” in Syria.

The current situation “must not be used to drive the Kurds out again, to create a new cycle of violence,” insisted Annalena Berbok.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that clashes took place yesterday between pro-Turkish forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Tikhrin Dam zone on the Euphrates.

The Observatory reported the death of a woman and her child “during shelling by artillery of the pro-Turkish forces” in the Kobani district of northern Syria.