Some 1,500 Syrian fighters were involved in the offensive with 200 Turkish soldiers also on the ground, it added. “We want to help the Turks get ISIL off the border”, one official said, using an acronym for ISIS. Erdogan said the offensive targeted both the jihadists and Kurdish fighters, vowing Turkey would “never kneel down”.
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Activists reported that ISIS has delivered Jarabulus city to the Turkey-backed rebels without any resistance.
“That’s what the United States promised”. Kurdish militia fighters would not receive USA support if they failed to pull back east of the Euphrates as promised, he said.
The official said the campaign is “very significant”. When an initial group returned to Syria that fall, they were attacked by rival forces, and some turned over weapons to al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Ankara on Wednesday, the most senior US official to visit the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member since a coup attempt in July by a renegade wing of the military.
A senior Turkish official told reporters that operations would continue until “we are convinced” that imminent threats to Turkey are neutralized.
“Kurdish gains along the Turkish border have been anathema to Erdoğan’s government, which had restarted its war against the Kurdish population inside Turkey as well as against [Kurdish] PKK camps in Iraq”, argues commentator Vijay Prashad. Erdogan said the operation was in response to a string of attacks in Turkey, including a suicide bombing at a wedding party near the border that killed 54 people.
Troops will create a safe zone of 90 by 40 kilometers (55 by 25 miles) for refugees between the towns of Marea and Jarablus, Turkish media said. Turkey will not allow terrorist organizations next to us to threaten Turkey.
The air strikes are Turkey’s first inside Syria since the downing of a Russian jet in November.
Vice President Joe Biden has met with Turkish President Erdogan, but was their meeting enough to mend the relationship that was terribly damaged after last month’s coup attempt?
Now that Turkey has entered the ground war and invaded Syria, it could likely find itself fighting on multiple fronts: ISIS, Kurdish militia and even the Syrian government in Damascus, which denounced Turkey’s incursion as “aggression” and a “blatant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty.
“Our border must be completely cleansed of Daesh”, Cavusoglu said in televised remarks Monday, referring to ISIS by another name.
Addressing a news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Biden said Washington had made clear to the YPG that they should return east of the Euphrates river again – a red line for Turkey.
Turkey and the YPG share a common enemy in ISIS.
“Daesh (Islamic State) fighters have withdrawn from several villages on the outskirts of Jarablus and are heading south towards the city of al Bab”, the Failaq al Sham commander said.
The rebels are not combing the city, as IS sleeping cells are still hiding in that area, the last IS foothold on the borders with Turkey.
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But the YPG has ties to the Kurdish PKK movement, which the USA and the European Union consider to be a terrorist organization and which has waged a deadly insurgency across eastern Turkey since in the 1980s.
