ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted Saturday as saying Turkey would never allow the formation of a Kurdish state embracing its southeast and parts of northern Syria, comments likely to anger Kurds as a peace process with Ankara stalls.

Turkey has looked askance as Syrian Kurds have made military advances against ISIS militants in Syria, fearing that could lead to the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state there and further embolden Turkey’s own 14 million-strong Kurdish minority.

“We will never allow the establishment of a state in Syria’s north and our south. We will continue our fight in this regard no matter what it costs,” local media Saturday quoted Erdogan as saying.

“They want to complete the operation to change the demographic structure of the region. We will not turn a blind eye to this.”

Turkish officials have accused Syrian Kurds of driving Arabs out of villages and towns they have occupied. The Kurds deny any suggestion of “ethnic cleansing.”

The fate of Turkey’s Kurdish minority is one of the country’s most vexing political questions. Erdogan took a huge gamble in 2012 when he opened up peace talks with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to end a three-decade insurrection for greater Kurdish autonomy that has killed 40,000. But peace talks have since stalled and Kurds accuse Erdogan of backtracking.

The backlash against Erdogan culminated with a stunning success for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in parliamentary elections this month, when it crossed – for the first time – the 10 percent threshold required to enter parliament. Its victory helped deprive the governing AK Party founded by Erdogan of a single party majority for the first time since it swept to power more than a decade ago. The AK Party is now looking for a junior partner to form a coalition.

Syrian Kurdish fighters said Saturday they had fully secured the town of Ain al-Arab near the Turkish border and killed more than 60 ISIS militants, after two days of fighting that saw the takfiri group kill around 200 civilians.

The HDP said this week the Ain al-Arab attack was the direct result of years of Turkish state support for Islamist militants, something Erdogan angrily denied. He accused the HDP, in turn, of a “slanderous defamation campaign.”

Meanwhile, Ankara intends to construct more walls along its border with Syria to strengthen security against ISIS militants and crack down on illegal border crossings, senior officials told Reuters.

Turkey has already erected more than 10 km of walls along its borders, supported by additional measures such as thermal cameras.

Now, the government wants to add to that and is considering adding portable concrete walls in some locations, two officials told Reuters. The portable walls, which are made up of concrete slabs, can be taken down and reassembled in different locations.

Ankara decided that constructing a wall along the length of the border would be too costly. The officials declined to say how long a wall the government was looking to build, or where it would put it.