Erdogan s comments came two weeks after Turkey launched an ambitious operation inside Syria, sending tanks and special forces to back up Syrian opposition fighters and remove IS jihadists and Kurdish militia from its frontier.
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Speaking to reports accompanying him on his return from the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, Erdogan said that U.S. President Barack Obama suggested during a meeting last week, between both parties in China, the possibility of joint military action to control the city of Raqqa.
US President Barack Obama said “gaps of trust” continue to prevent the US and Russian Federation from reaching a ceasefire agreement on Syria, following a meeting between the two sides at the G20 summit in China.
Washington says Turkish attacks on Kurdish-aligned militias damage a US -backed coalition that is fighting Islamic State.
Russia, who is allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said it was deeply concerned by the Turkish advance.
There are a lot of reasons to criticize Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who’s increasingly behaving like an old-school autocrat and who has been arresting critics en masse, but he’s actually proving himself to be useful in Syria.
“Obama wants to do some things jointly concerning Raqqa”, Erdogan said.
“We have agreed with them about where each party will be, geographically, in such a way that they can conduct their operations against [Islamic State] and not run into each other”, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a recent interview with CNN.
Erdogan also said Turkish and United States military officials could meet to discuss the issue, according to Turkish media.
Turkey, which hosts three million Syrian refugees, has urged world powers to back plans for a “safe zone” in north Syria to stem the flow of migrants and to allow Syrians to return home.
“Currently, conflict lines are too insecure for numerous town’s displaced to return safely”, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report last week, referring to Jarablus which had a pre-war population of about 27,500 people.
The Pentagon expects that the group will help capture Raqqa.
“Soldiers of the caliphate. targeted two tanks belonging to the apostate Turkish army with guided rockets”, the group said in a statement circulated on social media late on Tuesday. Turkey claimed U.S. assurances that the Kurds would not keep Manbij, on the western shore of the river, and Turkey invaded the following week, capturing the ISIS city of Jarabulus, due north of Manbij.
Turkey would seek no other objective around Manbij other than the retreat of the YPG forces, Isik said.
As the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of Manbij, a strategically important town controlled by ISIS until 12 August 2016, the apparent conflict between SDF and the US-lead worldwide coalition backing them deterred any constructive movement on the ground.
Turkey, meanwhile, has been sending more military hardware south.
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Turkey’s branding of PYD and YPG as terrorist groups have put it at odds with Washington, which sees the YPG as a valuable and effective ally in its fight against Islamic State in Syria.
