Turkey will not abide by US sanctions on Iran, Erdoğan says

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday said U.S. sanctions on Iran were "not right".

Following a parliamentary group meeting, Erdoğan told reporters: "We do not find the sanctions right. Because our opinion is that these sanctions aim at destroying the world's balance," said Erdoğan.

Erdoğan stressed that the U.S. sanctions on Iran contradict with the international law and diplomacy.

"We don't want to live in an imperialist world," he added.

Washington announced new sanctions on Monday targeting Iran's energy and financial sectors along with its shipping industry.

More than 700 individuals, entities, aircraft, and vessels were blacklisted, including 50 Iranian banks and their domestic and foreign subsidiaries.

The U.S. government granted China, Greece, India, Turkey, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan a 180-day waiver for importing Iranian oil, which eased worries of supply reduction in the global markets after the sanctions went into effect.

Erdoğan said that joint patrols between U.S. forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the Turkish-Syrian border were unacceptable and he expected U.S. President Donald Trump to stop them.

Erdoğan, set to meet Trump in Paris this weekend, told reporters he would discuss the patrols carried out by the United States and the SDF, which would cause "serious negative developments" along the border.

The SDF is dominated by the YPG militia, which is the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey has made historic success against terror groups under our rule, Erdoğan said.

"Turkey has gained historic results against terror groups, gangs and drug dealers, and any other action targeting peace in our term [since 2002]," Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, in an address to his Justice and Development (AK) Party's parliamentary group.

The AK Party won the November 2002 election with two-thirds of the seats in parliament. It became the first party to win an outright majority in over a decade.

To date 2,000 people have been arrested, 7,000 others deported and around 70,000 people denied entry to Turkey over their links to the Daesh terror group, Erdoğan said.

"[They include] 761 terrorists in the country, 1,092 in northern Iraq, 3,000 in Operation Euphrates Shield, and over 4,500 in Operation Olive Branch were neutralized in the operations since July 2016," he said.

Launched in 2016, Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield saw Turkish troops -- backed by the Free Syrian Army -- liberate large swathes of northwestern Syria from terrorist groups.

On Jan. 20, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch to free northwestern Syrian city of Afrin of YPG/PKK and Daesh terrorists. On March 18, Turkish troops and the Free Syrian Army liberated the Afrin city center.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU -- has been responsible for the death of some 40,000 people, including those of women and children. The YPG is its Syrian branch.