A Syrian commander in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State who allegedly defected to Turkey has accused the United States of arming "terror" groups" fighting Turkey.

In the third segment of a serialized interview with Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, Talal Silo, the former spokesman of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), kept up allegations, many of them contradictory, that the US-backed group was established as cover for the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“The SDF’s foundation was only theater. The United States gave the leadership to the Kurds and the PKK,” Silo claimed, adding that many of the weapons provided by the United States wound up in the hands of the PKK and the United States did not keep track of them. “The weapons go to the SDF and from there to the YPG. They reach the PKK from the YPG.”

The PKK has been fighting for an independent Kurdish state and self-rule inside Turkey since 1984 and is listed as a terror group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States alike. Silo insisted that the PKK was the real boss of the YPG and SDF.