Turkey should put pressure on the USA in order to achieve the withdrawal of Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) from strategically important city of Manbij in Syria on the west bank of the Euphrates River, says a Turkish expert. This leaves them a wide ribbon of territory they’ll be expected to defend, with the only towns of note on the easternmost and westernmost edges.
Advertisement
“We will continue our operations (in Syria) until we fully guarantee security of life and property for our citizens and the security of our border…”
About 5,000 USA and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have crossed into northern Syria from Turkey to participate in the so-called Euphrates Shield operation, according to local journalist Adnan al-Hussein, who is embedded with the groups.
Dogan says rockets have killed 21 Kilis residents and wounded scores since January.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency reported the advance “has removed terror organisation Daesh’s (IS) physical contact with the Turkish border in northern Syria”. “The (rebel-held) neighborhoods are under siege again”, said the Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, by telephone. The militant group said it sent three suicide bombers to the area, the first of them in a vehicle. Advances by the insurgents in recent days have brought them to within 10 km (six miles) of government-controlled Hama, the Observatory and insurgents say. In comments to reporters after meeting Obama, Erdogan reiterated that the Kurds are as much of a target of Turkey’s Syria intervention as the Islamic State.
Turkey is fighting a three-decade-old Kurdish insurgency in the southeast and fears that gains by the Syrian Kurdish YPG will embolden militants at home.
Turkey opened the second front in Syria on Saturday as part of that continued mission against Islamic State, according to a senior Turkish official.
The U.S. has provided extensive aid and airstrikes to the People’s Protection Units-led Syria Democratic Forces, which have proven to be highly effective against the Islamic State. She said it was likely that as Islamic State militants are pushed out of territory, they will increasingly target government and Kurdish areas.
The governor of Homs province said a vehicle bomb struck a military checkpoint in the provincial capital, killing three soldiers and a civilian, and wounding 10 others.
Advertisement
The loss of Aleppo would be a devastating symbolic blow to the rebels, sending a signal that President Bashal al-Assad has reclaimed his hold over the country and that the rebel movement is on its last legs. A senior State Department official, who declined to be named, said Russian Federation had walked back on some of issues that the sides had already agreed on, which was why both sides needed to continue talking.
