As many as 20 tanks crossed into Syria in the early hours of Wednesday, with Sky sources inside Syria also seeing vehicles and troops from the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army heading for the Syrian border town of Jarablus.
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Turkish special forces and tanks rolled across the border today, and fairly quickly secured Jarabulus for the rebels.
President Tayyip Erdogan said the operation was targeting Islamic State and the Kurdish PYD party, whose gains in northern Syria have alarmed Turkey.
Turkey backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but is also anxious that Kurdish forces which have fought the Syrian government pose a threat to its own security. The YPG is also linked to Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
In its report, Anadolu Agency, which cited unnamed government officials, did not say how many tanks had entered Syria.
Saleh Muslim, the co-president of the PYD, warned that Turkey will pay the price, tweeting that “Turkey is in Syrian Quagmire”.
The latest developments have thrust the town into the spotlight of the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Jarablus is one of the last major towns that Islamic State controls along the Syrian-Turkish border and has been a key staging area for transporting militants in and out of Turkey.
Earlier this month, the SDF, backed by intensive and deadly U.S. air support, drove ISIS out of the strategic town of Manbij. That’s what the United States’ promised. “That was our agreement”, he added.
“God willing, we will get a result in a short time” to kick IS out of Jarabulus, Interior Minister Efkan Ala told the state-run Anadolu news agency, saying Turkey was working with coalition partners and moderate Syrian opposition.
The United States is providing Turkey’s military with air cover, intelligence and advisers in its offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group inside Syria, a senior USA official said on Wednesday. He spoke alongside Biden, who said Washington backed the offensive with airstrikes, adding, “We believe very strongly that the Turkish border should be controlled by Turkey”.
Turkey says the air and ground operation dubbed “Euphrates Shield” will clear jihadists from the Syrian town of Jarabulus, which lies directly opposite the Turkish town of Karkamis.
NTV described it as an “intruder mission” meant to carry out “pinpoint operations” against IS to clear Jarablus of the extremists.
Some 1,500 Syrian opposition fighters were involved, said Ahmad al-Khatib, an activist embedded with the rebels.
Speaking at a news conference in Ankara alongside his Estonian counterpart Marina Kaljurand, Cavusoglu said the terror group targeted the country because Turkey “is one of the most decisive countries in the fight against Daesh”. He said the operation was a turning point and would accelerate the ousting of Islamic State from Syria’s Aleppo region.
There was no immediate word on any fatalities in Wednesday’s operation.
The offense operation was launched on the same day that United States Vice President Joe Biden is supposed to be visiting Syria for a unified strategy which is said to be a climatic question to answer.
Biden is the most senior USA official to travel to the country since a failed July 15 coup strained ties between the two North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members and shook confidence in Turkey’s ability to step up the fight against ISIS.
Turkish tanks and special forces accompanied by pro-Ankara Syrian rebels then rolled across the border in an unprecedented operation to drive the IS group out of the town from which it has fired rockets into Turkey.
The capture of Jarablus came after Turkey vowed on Monday to “completely cleanse” ISIS from its border following a suicide bombing at a wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on Saturday.
If to consider the last diplomatic move of Turkish officials, namely visits to Russian Federation and Iran, one can say that Ankara has received the expected support from these countries.
The U.S. -backed Syria Democratic Forces alliance (SDF), which includes the YPG, captured the city of Manbij, just south of Jarablus, from Daesh earlier this month.
Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said his country wants the YPG to return east of Syria’s Euphrates River.
Turkey’s intervention underlines a shift in how the Turkish government sees the Syrian civil war, says Selim Sazak, a foreign policy analyst at The Century Foundation.
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A cease-fire in Hasaka on Tuesday ended the most violent confrontation between Kurdish and government forces in more than five years of war, Reuters reported. The Kurdish Hawar News Agency said government forces agreed to withdraw from Hasakeh as part of the truce.
