Turkey-backed Syrian rebels would like to see a “safe zone” set up in areas of the border they are capturing from Islamic State, but this would need an agreement between the United States, Turkey and Russian Federation, a rebel commander said on Tuesday.
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Turkey launched an unprecedented operation inside Syria on August 24.
Turkey says such a “safe zone” would help stem the flood of Syrian refugees. We wouldn’t consider anything before that as formal passage. “But this area is still very thin and vulnerable to attacks from the other side”, said a senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity so as to discuss the strategy more freely.
Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the “Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” visited Turkey and Syria this weekend and with a message for United States allies to refocus their efforts in the region against Daesh.
“Our 91km border has been completely secured”, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said during a televised speech on Sunday.
Ankara would not object, Erdogan said.
“We are talking about two superpowers with great stakes in Syria”. The Britain-based Observatory, which maintains a network of contacts in Syria, put the overall death toll at 53, although Syrian state TV said 48 were killed. The “Islamic State” (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria. The army sent 15 more tanks to the Islahiye district near the border, bringing the total number of tanks and armoured vehicles in that area to 90, Dogan news agency reported. The city is mostly held by the YPG which fought Isis in combination with pro-Syrian government Arab militia and Syrian soldiers, but relations between the two was always fraught. Will the Turkish troops be forced to advance deeper toward al-Bab, down a corridor sandwiched between regime-held areas to the west and YPG-controlled areas to the east? It said the wounded were evacuated by helicopters. Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK which is fighting an insurgency on Turkish soil.
Syrian rebels, backed by coalition forces, retook two villages near Al-Rai, it added. The Kurdish fighters are since supposed to have pulled back east of the Euphrates. The Turkey-backed rebels say they want to capture the city from the Kurdish-allied forces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he has responded positively to a US request for a joint operation against Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Syria, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
Erdogan earlier said Obama had floated the idea of such cooperation during meetings at a summit of G20 leaders in China this week, the daily Hurriyet reported.
Without giving further details, he said: “What can be done will become clear after the discussions”.
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USA officials have welcomed Turkish efforts to dislodge Islamic State but voiced concern when Turkish troops engaged fighters aligned with the Kurdish YPG militia, a force Washington sees as a valuable ally in battling jihadists.
