On Monday, Turkey’s military launched howitzer attacks on Islamic State while artillery pounded Kurdish YPG militants in Syria, whom Ankara sees as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency.
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Turkey is now facing a Kurdish insurgency on its own territory and is concerned about growing nationalist sentiment among the minority group.
Anadolu Agency said Turkish artillery fired 40 rounds against Isis targets on Tuesday, after three rockets fired from Syria landed in an empty field in the town of Kilis.
A Kurdish-led group known as the Syria Democratic Forces earlier this month liberated Manbij, triggering concerns in Ankara that they would seize the entire border strip with Turkey. Government and Kurdish forces have shared control of Hasakeh since the early years of the Syrian war. The Kurds held around 70 percent of Hasaka prior to the latest fighting.
The Asayish is a YPG-affiliated security force. Government policemen would be left to secure the one remaining area under state control.
Local media also reported Turkish tanks being deployed in the vicinity of Karkamis. The official said the aim was to open a corridor for the rebels.
YPG-controlled areas of northern Syria include an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border from the eastern frontier with Iraq to the Euphrates river, and a pocket of territory in northwestern Syria.
In a sign of a key battle to come, Syrian rebel fighters have amassed on the Turkish side of the border in preparation for an offensive on the town of Jarablus, ISIL’s last major transit point on the Syrian side of the border.
“Seizing Minbij is meant to help cut down on the flow of foreign fighters to Islamic State from over the still-porous Turkish border and weaken the extremist group”s hold in northern Syria, according to Kurdish and USA officials. Islamic State and Syrian rebel factions hold villages on the other side of the border. Rebel sources say they have been mobilising in Turkey, ready to cross into Jarablus.
The rebels, Turkey-backed groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, are expected to assault Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days, said the rebel official, who is familiar with the plans but declined to be identified. One rebel at the border told the BBC the number was as high as 1,500 fighters. He will be the most senior USA official to visit the country since a failed coup attempt in mid-July. The SDF also issued a statement in which it declared its full support for the council.
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Mr Cavusoglu said Turkey was a “prime target of Daesh” because the government had dried up the group’s resources of foreign fighters, placing an entry ban on 55,000 members and deporting around 4,000 suspects.
