Two Turkish F-16 warplanes struck six Islamic State targets and a position of the US -backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria on Saturday, Turkish security sources said.
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“Late last week, Syrian jets from President Bashar al-Assad’s Air Force bombed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria with USA special operations forces nearby, according to a United States defense official, in another sign of the increasingly complex battlefield in Syria”. The thinking among diplomats is that could lead to re-launching talks on a political transition to end the five-year Syrian conflict.
But President Tayyip Erdogan and senior government officials have made clear the aim of “Operation Euphrates Shield” is as much about stopping the Kurdish YPG militia seizing territory and filling the void left by Islamic State as it is about eliminating the ultra-hardline Islamist group itself.
Yildirim said there was no doubt the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy, was responsible.
“From the beginning we have been defending Turkey’s territorial integrity”.
Turkey’s openly hostile stance against the YPG has been a thorny issue with the US-led anti-IS coalition which has relied on YPG fighters on the ground to coordinate its strikes against the jihadists in Syria.
Speaking about influence of the situation in Syria on the migration crisis in Europe, Allard noted that this crisis is due not just because of factors rooted in the long civil war in Iraq and Syria, but also because of inability of the European countries to define and apply a migration policy.
On Friday, Erdogan also briefed Putin on the Turkish incursion into Syria launched this week to liberate a key Islamic State stronghold, according to the officials. “They will never succeed”, Yildirim told a news conference in Istanbul. The “Islamic State” (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) is the most active terrorist group in Syria.
Turkey sent more tanks into Syria on August 25, one day after launching an operation against ISIL in the Syrian town of Jarablus.
Should Turkish tanks wind up sharing a front line with Kurdish fighters, it raises the possibility of a violent flare-up between the two, he added. “This is the Turkish government’s foreign policy toward Syria”, Kurkcu said.
Syrian rebel groups Firqat al-Hamzah, Faylaq al-Sham, Harakat Nur-al-Din al-Zinki, and Sultan Murat Tümeni all confirmed they were working with the Turkish military.
Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik warned the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia – which Turkey views as the Syrian branch of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey – to move back east across the Euphrates or face destruction.
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Allard noted that YPG and PYD slashed back by their allies, means a possible decrease of their members, who are willing to fight.
