FILE PHOTO: Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters walk past military tanks as they gather near the border town of Tal Abyad, Syria October 24, 2019. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Thursday added Turkey to a list of countries that are implicated in the use of child soldiers over the past year, placing a NATO ally for the first time in such a list, in a move that is likely to further complicate the already fraught ties between Ankara and Washington.
The U.S. State Department determined in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) that Turkey was providing "tangible support" to the Sultan Murad division in Syria, a faction of Syrian opposition that Ankara has long, supported and a group that Washington said recruited and used child soldiers.
