Erdogan earlier said Obama had floated the idea of such cooperation during meetings at a summit of G20 leaders in China this week, the daily Hurriyet reported.
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As soon at they crossed the border, Turkish troops and planes attacked the Kurdish forces and ordered them to pull out of Manbij and withdraw to territory west of the Euphrates river.
The army said Turkey’s rebel allies had taken six more villages, located in Islamic State-held areas, adding to dozens of settlements now under the control of Turkish-backed forces.
But NATO member Turkey, an active participant of the anti-IS coalition, considers the YPG a “terrorist” group and has been alarmed by its expansion along the border, fearing the creation of a contiguous, semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria.
Turkey has been alarmed by US support for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia which Ankara sees as a “terrorist” group linked to its own Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has been waging a bloody campaign against the Turkish state.
Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara suggested the United States and Russian Federation to close the airspace in northern Syria.
Two Turkish soldiers were killed and five injured on Tuesday, in a rocket attack by Islamic State group in northern Syria.
Neither commented directly on the Turkish proposal, though both said they wanted to build cooperation in fighting terrorism in Syria.
Turkish jets pounded PKK hideouts in northern Iraq and killed at least 30 terrorists on Sunday, announced the military.
Turkish-backed forces clashed with YPG fighters in the initial stages of the two-week old Turkish incursion into Syria, but have since shifted their focus onto territory held by Islamic State and captured a string of villages.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had told U.S. President Barack Obama that Turkey would support a joint operation to capture Raqqa, the Syrian city that is Islamic State’s de facto capital, Canikli said. “If they don’t retreat, Turkey will be determined and return Manbij to its owners”, said Yasin Aktay, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AK Party, referring to Arab and Turkmen communities who lived there before civil war broke out in 2011.
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“I said “our soldiers should come together and discuss, then what is necessary will be done”, Erdogan was quoted as saying.
