Biden called on Turkish authorities on Wednesday to be patient with the US legal system as Turkey seeks the return of the cleric accused of masterminding last month’s failed military coup, Fethullah Gulen, saying the extradition process would take time. They number approximately 30 million across the region, including an estimated 2 million in Syria. It’s unclear exactly what role the Syrian fighters played in the lightning-fast battle, which was launched from the Turkish side of the border and included Turkish troops, tanks and planes.
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Washington is also helping ensure Kurdish fighters further south do not provoke a conflict with Turkish forces by moving north toward Jarabulus, the official said.
Kurdish forces “must move back across the Euphrates River”. Jarabulus had a population of 30,000, half of them displaced from other parts of war-torn Syria, according to Fabrice Balanche, a French expert on the political geography of Syria.
Battling IS militants in Syria, the USA -backed Syrian Kurds have been able to seize almost the entire stretch of the border with Turkey in northern Syria.
Victory on the battlefield has brought more and more Western support. The fight includes US-trained fighters known as the Vetted Syrian Opposition and Turkish forces.
“I wholeheartedly support this operation …”
The PYD share control of the northeastern city of Qamishli with government forces.
A truce was reportedly brokered by Russian Federation after recent clashes between the Kurds and Syrian government forces there. -Syrian confrontation of the war.
Turkey has arrested or fired 80,000 government workers, judges, academics and school teachers it believes were sympathetic to Gulen or somehow involved in the coup attempt launched by a group of renegade military officers. Turkey had demanded the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the SDF, return to the east bank of the river. It’s the last major town held by ISIS on the Syrian-Turkish border. The PYD has denied the allegations, insisting it is fighting for democratic self-rule.
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group Wednesday the military would like to continue operating from Incirlik.
Turkey on Wednesday launched its first major ground assault into Syria since the country’s civil war began, sending in tanks and special forces backed by US airstrikes to help Syrian rebels retake a border town from Islamic State militants. But while IS was the main target, the operation was widely seen as an escalation against the Kurds, who are dug in just to the south, in Manbij. The morale of the military was shaken by July’s coup attempt; a successful offensive against ISIS would play well both for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the high command.
If regional powers fear a proxy run amok, the Kurds worry that they will again be used as a pawn in global statecraft. He said the aim is to create a “terror-free zone” in northern Syria to prevent militants from entering Turkey.
That statement refers to an apparently separate pullout from the withdrawal that Turkey is seeking from the Kurdish forces. The U.S., which was backing Saddam in the Iraq-Iran War, did not interfere. Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria was also meant to contain an expansion by Syria’s Kurds.
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Al-Moallem’s visit comes a day after Turkey sent ground forces across the border into Syria to take a key Islamic State stronghold, a development that Damascus denounced as a “blatant violation” of Syrian sovereignty.
