Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Sunday that his nation’s forces and Syrian rebels expelled the Islamic State group from the last areas of the Syrian-Turkish border under its control.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that government troops captured first the Armament Academy and later the Artillery Academy, laying siege on the rebel-held eastern neighborhoods.
Numerous villages along the border between Syria and Turkey had been taken by Turkish-backed forces “after IS withdrew from them, ending IS’s presence” in the troubled region.
It said the incursion, dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield, was meant to engage the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the Syrian-Turkish border area as well as Kurdish fighters, who were themselves fighting Daesh.
Turkey last month mounted its first full-scale incursion into Syrian territory since the conflict began, aimed at IS and at USA -backed Kurdish forces in the area, which have also been battling the jihadists.
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.
ISIS has lost control of all territories on Syria’s border with Turkey, according to monitoring groups.
The Observatory said IS still controls four border villages, adding that once they are taken it will cut the extremist group’s last “link with the outside world”.
“Turkey has had this aim since the beginning”, he said in a Friday interview in Istanbul.
The war has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced 11 million, causing a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe, and contributed to a rise in militant Islamist groups. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Moscow has backed Assad in the war and Russian warplanes have targeted the opposition for almost a year, while Washington has supported some rebel groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army to topple him.
“There are no clashes, ISIL fighters flee as soon as they see us advancing, especially because we are supported by Turkish air power”, Ahmed Othman, a commander in the pro-Turkey rebel group Sultan Murad, told Al Jazeera from Aleppo’s northern suburbs on Saturday.
Among Turkey’s strategic goals for the operation was to create a buffer zone within Syria that could protect both its citizens from terror attacks and fleeing Syrians.
Turkey and the USA have accused Syrian Kurdish fighters of breaking promises not to seize more land along the border area.
A deal would depend on Moscow using its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad to persuade him to ground planes and stop the assault on opposition forces.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said in a joint press conference with Obama in China that “our wish is that a terror corridor does not form on our southern border”.
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Now there are 250,000 civilians living in the areas of Aleppo controlled by terror group ISIS.
