The Turkish assault, launched in retaliation after a string of militant bombings in Turkey, adds yet another powerhouse force on the ground in an already complicated war.
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The loss of Jarabulus marked the end of Islamic State’s presence along the 500-mile Syria-Turkey border.
In the past, it also turned a blind eye to militants, including those from Islamic State, arriving from overseas, who were then smuggled across the Turkish border into Syria to fight forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The United States has long lobbied Turkey to take on a more decisive role in the fight against the Islamic State, and it was not until past year that the Americans secured permission to conduct airstrikes in Syria from its base in Incirlik in southeast Turkey.
By evening, Syrian rebel fighters declared that they had taken control of the Islamic State stronghold, the town of Jarabulus and its surroundings, which had been the militant group’s last major redoubt near the Turkish border.
The U.S. also deployed A-10 attack planes and armed drones, and U.S. special forces advisors worked alongside Turkish commanders in Turkey, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the offensive was still underway.
“A terrorist organisation fighting another terrorist organisation doesn’t make it innocent”, he said, adding that Islamic State had been forced out of Jarablus and that the town was now under control of the Syrian rebels. It’s possible Turkish forces will leave some tanks in the area to fend off any counterattacks by the Islamic State, experts said.
Speaking during a live television program on Haberturk late Wednesday, Yildirim said Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield aims to clear the PYD and the YPG as well as Daesh from a particular zone along the Turkish border in northern Syria.
A dozen Turkish tanks then rolled into Syria along with hundreds of Syrian opposition fighters in pick-ups who then moved south towards Jarabulus.
But for Turkey, it also pre-empts any attempt by Syrian Kurdish militia, who play a critical part of the USA -backed campaign against Islamic State, to take Jarablus.
Ankara considers the Democratic Union Party to be the Syrian offshoot of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which it has battled for decades.
Saleh Muslim, the co-president of the PYD, warned that Turkey will pay the price, tweeting that “Turkey is in Syrian Quagmire”. The YPG is also linked to Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
With the backing of US airstrikes, Turkish forces secured the border town of Jarablus on western side of the Euphrates river. It sees a successful Kurdish effort to conquer and hold territory along its border as a potentially existential danger to the Turkish state.
The YPG has been the most effective fighting force in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces coalition against ISIL, helping to capture the strategically important town of Manbij from ISIL this month. “Otherwise, and I say this clearly, we will do what is necessary”.
Jarabulus in northern Syria must be cleared of the PYD and YPG groups, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday, Anadolu reported.
About 1,500 Syrian opposition fighters joined the cross-border operation.
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Under the mediation of Russian Federation, a second truce succeeded to hold on Tuesday, but only after the Syrian government reportedly approved a previously-denied Kurdish request, which was the dissolve of pro-government militia, called the National Defense Forces (NDF), from Hasakah. It said that Turkey, by targeting both ISIS militants and Syrian Kurds, could further inflame the Syrian civil war, leading to “flare-ups of inter-ethnic tensions between Kurds and Arabs”. US officials estimated that there had been 200 to 300 Islamic State fighters in the city.
