Turkish special forces units and jets supported by warplanes from the USA -led coalition launched an operation in northern Syria on Wednesday to wipe out Islamic State militants along the border, Turkish officials said. The Dogan news agency reported on Wednesday that counter-terrorism police had also launched dawn raids targeting IS members in Istanbul.
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Biden is scheduled to meet with Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
Turkey will want to show with the operation that it is serious about taking on IS, which has been blamed for a string of attacks inside the country, the latest a weekend attack on a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep that left 54 dead.
U.S. vice president Joe Biden is due in Turkey later on Wednesday, the most senior USA official to visit since a failed July 15 coup shook confidence in the ability of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member to step up the fight against ISIS.
At least nine mortar shells from Jarablus landed in Karkamis and nearby on Tuesday, forcing many residents to flee, a Reuters witness said.
That growing Kurdish influence has alarmed Ankara, which is fighting its own insurgency with militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), blamed by the government for an escalation of attacks in the southeast of Turkey.
Jarablus, which lies on the western bank of the Euphrates River where it crosses from Turkey into Syria, is one of the last important IS-held towns standing between Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria. In recent months, Turkey has seen a number of other attacks blamed on the jihadists, including a suicide bombing on Saturday in Gaziantep on a Kurdish wedding party, in which 54 people – a lot of them under 18 – were killed.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Turkey “cannot sit and watch”, adding that it was Turkey’s “legal right, it is within its authority” to act. He said he hoped the operation to clear Jarablus would be completed at the soonest, but did not provide a time-frame.
Turkey’s military launched an operation Wednesday to oust the radical Islamist group from the town of Jarabulus in Syria, the Turkish prime minister’s office said.
The operation comes in response to terrorist attacks on Turkish soil and artillery fire by DAESH on Turkish border towns.
Turkish state media, meanwhile, say the rebels were about to enter a Syrian village leading to Jarablus.
About the operation’s duration, he says: “Until when?”
Turkey had declared the border area a “special security zone”, and asked journalists not to try to access it, citing safety concerns and threats posed by IS. “Sheltering such a person promises nothing to the USA”, he said.
Private NTV television says the Turkish special forces entered Syria on Wednesday in what it described was an “intruder mission” to carry out “pinpoint operations” against IS as part of the mission to clear the town of Jarablus of the extremists.
There were even unconfirmed reports that Turkish intelligence officials had travelled to Damascus earlier in the week to inform Bashar al-Assad’s government of details regarding the operation.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s office said the operation, carried out by Turkish and US -backed coalition forces, began at 4 a.m. (0100 GMT), with Turkish artillery launching intense cross-border fire on Jarablus, followed by Turkish warplanes bombing IS targets in the town, Anadolu said.
Turkey has also increased its physical security precautions along its border with Syria.
Turkish state news agency Anadolu said that the operation, named “Euphrates Shield”, began at 4 a.m. local time.
Speaking in Ankara, he said that Turkey was seeking to “remove the shadow cast on the religion of Islam by Islamic State”.
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On Tuesday, Cavusoglu’s pledged “every kind” of support for operations against IS along a 100-kilometer (62-mile) stretch of Syrian frontier.
