“This shows the matter is being taken seriously by the USA”, he said. “We are cooperating with the Turkish authorities”.
Advertisement
Biden said he had addressed the issues in his meetings with Turkish leaders Wednesday.
He added that Syrian Kurdish forces will lose the USA support if they do not retreat to east of Euphrates. Biden called the coup’s perpetrators “terrorists”, reflecting Erdogan’s language, and said, “I wish I could have been here earlier”.
Turkey would not have launched “Operation Euphrates Shield” on Wednesday without a green light from Russian Federation, he said. Explosions reverberated across the border, followed by billowing gray smoke. Photographs posted on social media showed rebels posing in front of deserted government buildings in the town’s central square and raising the flags of Turkey and the Free Syrian Army over the gates to the town.
On Thursday, Turkish forces were securing the area around Jarablus, Turkey’s Defense Minister Fikri Isik said.
It was not immediately clear if any Turkish or Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces crossed the border to take part in the operation. “And as per the treaties we have, the necessary steps should be taken with a view to his extradition”.
Meeting later with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Biden sought to counter head-on Turkish disappointment that Western officials had not come sooner to express solidarity after the coup. “We are waiting for it and following it”, he told the private NTV television station.
“Syrian Kurdish forces will lose USA support if they don’t retreat to east bank of Euphrates”, the United States vice president stated at a news conference.
The town is located along in Syria along the border with Turkey.
The council’s spokesman, Sherfan Darwish, earlier said the Syrian Kurdish YPG contingent that helped liberate Manbij earlier this month numbered about 500 fighters. Biden said that there should be no separate Kurdish entity carved out of northern Syria and that the country should remain united.
Turkey’s incursion into Syria reflects a shift away from its insistence that President Bashar al-Assad be removed from power in any settlement there and may start to close the gap between the global coalitions that have helped keep the country’s civil war raging, analysts and diplomats say.
But Turkish officials say a network of Gulen supporters infiltrated Turkey’s military and public offices for years to create a “parallel state”.
“We are very hopeful that it will be a very short time until we can roll”, Egeland told reporters.
“The capture of Manbij has changed things dramatically”, said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, who has run an influential Syria commentary forum for much of the war.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has announced that Ankara’s incursion, which the Syrian government has condemned as an “aggression” against the Arab country, will continue until fighters from PYD-affiliated Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) return to the east of the Euphrates river.
The operation is Ankara’s most significant move since the start of Syria’s bloody civil war more than five years ago.
The files include indictments and arrest warrants issued for Gulen by judges in Istanbul, Bursa and Ankara, who accuse Erdogan’s former ally of aggravated fraud, forgery of official documents, embezzlement and violation of privacy rights. After reiterating Washington’s claim, lacking all credibility, that it “did not have any foreknowledge” of the coup, he declared the USA government’s support for Ankara’s invasion of Syria and endorsed its key aims.
“Their basic argument was that the number of moderate rebels was simply not enough to perform the task of liberating Jarabulus and other parts of northern Syria”. AP White House Correspondent Mark Smith reports.
Since the July 15 failed coup, Turkey has rounded up tens of thousands of people accused of having links to Gulen’s organization.
Advertisement
Speaking at a news conference in Ankara hours after the invasion, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the aim of the operation was to clear ISIS from the southern border.
