Speculation has grown of a possible joint Turkey-US operation to seize Raqa and possibly IS-held Mosul in northern Iraq after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed he had discussed the issue with US counterpart Barack Obama at the G20 in China.
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Daesh is an Arabic name for Islamic State.
Turkey’s recent intervention in Syria shows its determination to protect its neighbor’s territorial integrity and prevent sectarian conflict, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Saturday.
Without giving further details, he said: “What can be done will become clear after the discussions”.
Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for Erdogan, said Tuesday that the ceasefire could begin with a 48-hour-truce that would then be lengthened and would see both the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters halt fire. As DEBKAfile has reported, the area of Turkey’s southern border and the strip that Turkish forces invaded in northern Syria have not been “cleansed” of ISIS forces, contrary to claims by Ankara.
On Aug. 27, one Tourkish soldier was killed and three others injured when the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) attacked their tanks.
The latest fatalities come as Turkey is considering an ambitious plan to capture from the jihadists the Syrian town of Raqa, the de facto capital of IS, an operation that would be on a different scale from Jarabulus.
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As ISIS starts to run out of nearby territory, the next likely targets are to be Kurdish territory along the Euphrates River, with Turkey making repeated demands for the Kurdish YPG to cede all territory west of the river, and rejecting U.S. claims that the Kurds have already done so.
