Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people, excluding the coup plotters, and over 2,000 people were wounded.
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Veterans of the Turkish War of Independence and their family members, as well as veterans of the Cyprus War and the July 15 coup attempt attended the ceremony held at the Presidency of General Staff.
Authorities have cracked down on schools, media and businesses run by Gulen since the July coup. He added that the advance would last until the area was no longer a threat to Turkey.
In Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir, almost 100 teenage students held a sit-in to protest against the suspensions in the city’s main square shouting slogans including “We want our teacher back”.
The Kurdish YPG did fight Daesh and take the city of Manbij away from the terrorist organization.
Southeastern Turkey has seen a surge in violence since the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in the region, abandoned a ceasefire in 2015. An operation to capture the militants is underway, sources said.
Some 250 U.S. troops are embedded with the leftist Kurdish militia, the YPG, and these fundamentalist Arab Syrian fighters have tangled with the Kurds over the latter’s hope of establishing a contiguous Kurdish mini-state in norther Syria.
“We have been patient”.
“But Turkey will not act unilaterally to liberate Raqqa”.
Erdogan said no lasting peace could be achieved in Syria without removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power.
“The future of Syria should be determined by its own people … Syria’s territorial integrity should be respected by other countries”.
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Iran and Russian Federation are key allies of Assad, standing by him since an uprising against his regime broke out in 2011.
