Turkish soldiers stand in a Turkish army tank driving back to Turkey from the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus on Friday in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Karkamis. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said 19 Syrian rebels wounded in clashes with IS since Saturday have been hospitalized in Turkey.
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The Associated Press reports that this means ISIS’s self-labeled caliphate in Syria and Iraq is now sealed off from the outside world, with opposing forces surrounding it on all sides, and its outside supply lines for foreign fighters, weapons, and ammunition cut.
The Turkish military is supporting a ground offensive by hundreds of pro-Ankara militants in Syria who managed to enter the Syrian border town of Jarablus in a lightening advance after meeting little resistance from Daesh terrorists there.
Some 20 tanks and a number of armored vehicles rolled into the northern Syrian town of al-Rai, in what the state-run Anadolu Agency described as a “new phase” in Operation Euphrates Shield launched on August 24, in which the Islamic State (IS) was driven from the Syrian border town of Jarablus. Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK which is fighting an insurgency on Turkish soil.
“The armed forces in cooperation with their allies took full control of the military academy zone south of Aleppo and are clearing the remaining terrorists from the area”, state TV said.
Areas controlled by President Bashar Assad’s forces have seen several bombings and other attacks during the country’s five-year civil war, with many claimed by Al-Qaida-linked militant groups.
Turkey’s recent intervention in the north has exposed major rifts and encouraged anti-Kurdish activity, Cafarella said via email. “Then we can say that our joint work with the United States in the fight against terrorist organizations, including along the Syrian track, will be significantly improved and intensified”.
It lies on the western edge of a corridor of ISIS-held territory along the Syrian-Turkish border.
The Kurdish YPG is an effective force also fighting so-called Islamic State in Syria, but worries Turkey because fighters want their own Kurdish homeland.
That puts Turkey in firm control of a stretch of land it sees as a bulwark against the US -backed Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Speaking at the G20 gathering of world leaders in China, President Tayyip Erdogan made no distinction between Turkey’s goals against Isis and the YPG, which controls the rest of the Syrian border area.
The crisis has been a vexing topic of discussion at the G20 meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China, where the United States and Russian Federation, at odds on the question of support for the Syrian regime, continue to work to strike a deal on resolving the conflict.
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The Turkish military said its warplanes had bombed three sites around the Syrian settlements of Arab Ezza and al-Ghundura, west of Jarablus, roughly in the center of the 90-km stretch of territory that Turkey says it aims to clear. The city, Syria’s third largest, is largely under government control, with only one neighborhood still under opposition control.
