Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has meanwhile argued in the past that any foreign incursion would be illegal.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, Kalin added that there was still no agreement between Turkey and the United States over the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Washington sees as an ally in the fight against IS but Ankara regards as a terror group.
“The first phase of the plan has been achieved”.
Since Turkey tightened its border, IS has been relying on products brought from Turkey into the rebel-held Syrian border town of Azaz.
Turkish and Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces are potentially hours away from completely cutting off the Islamic State’s access to the Turkish border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
On September 3, Turkey sent more tanks and other armoured vehicles into west of Jarablus, the offence aimed at targeting terrorists from both the east and west sides of the stretch of the territory between Jarablus and al-Rai, and taking control of all the villages between two cities.
An agreement between Russian Federation and the United States was believed to have been close at the G20 but Washington then admitted no deal could be announced for the moment.
Obama said after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Sunday that the two leaders had discussed a peaceful transition of power in Syria.
“All terrorist organisations have been repulsed and they have gone”. The Kurds, however, have local supporters in both Manbij and Jarablus.
Now Turkey has entered Syria to remove the threat it perceives from the PYD, overriding the Kurdish group’s importance for the United States.
Osman also told Reuters that the Turkey-backed rebels would soon be forced to confront Kurdish militias because they had not withdrawn from the area as demanded by the United States and Turkey.
Officials from the United States and Russian Federation, which back opposite sides in Syria’s civil war, have been meeting since Kerry traveled to Moscow in July with a proposal that would halt the fighting.
That could make it more vicious, he said, carrying out deadly attacks like those in in France, Belgium, Turkey, Iraq and elsewhere.
In July 2015, a Turkish soldier was killed after IS militants shot across the border into Turkey.
Turkish tanks entered northern Syria on August 24 to start the Jarabulus offensive, code-named “Operation Euphrates Shield” by Turkey. Aleppo has been a major battlefield in Syria since 2011, with fierce fighting between rebel groups and regime forces. The U.S. -led coalition has killed some of the group’s founding members, including spokesman and chief strategist Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, and its war minister, Omar al-Shishani. The Kurdish fighters are since supposed to have pulled back east of the Euphrates.
The New York Times article stressed that due to in-fighting, the rebel groups “risk reinforcing criticism that they are Turkish and American proxies at best, de facto allies of ISIS at worst”.
“So it’s a risky possibility that we’re witnessing ISIS gear up for a campaign to expand westward into either or both regime and opposition territory as it loses to the anti-ISIS coalition”, she said, using an acronym for the militant group.
The Islamic State-held town of Al-Bab, west of Manbij, is another a key strategic target for both Turkish-backed and Kurdish forces where Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, one of Islamic State’s most prominent leaders, is thought to have been killed in a US air strike last week.
Advertisement
How much damage has the Islamic State group done? The Observatory said four soldiers were killed.
