Interior Minister Efkan Ala said the authorities had arrested 865 people since the start of 2016, more than half of them foreigners, preventing them crossing through Turkey’s long border with Syria and Iraq.
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Turkey insists it will continue its offensive against Kurdish militants in Northern Syria despite the declaration of a temporary cease-fire between Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army rebels and the USA -backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is comprised largely of rebel militias from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD. Three Turkish soldiers were injured in a rocket attack on a tank near Jarabulus, according to Turkish television.
Western officials have expressed alarm that the fighting between the USA allies has diverted their attention from the fight against the Islamic State group.
While the U.S. has accepted Turkey’s designation of the PKK as a terrorist organization, Washington has resisted extending the designation to other Kurdish militias based in Syria and Iraq, while Ankara has maintained there is no distinction between them. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist organization.
Turkey’s incursion into Syria helped rebels take the border town of Jarablus from the Islamic State group last week, but clashes have since broken out between Turkish and Kurdish forces in the area.
USA efforts to address the concerns of its coalition members and its partners are “above and beyond what we’ve been doing previously, given the sensitivity of this situation and the importance, once again, of keeping everyone focused on what matters most, and that is keeping the pressure on ISIL”, Cook said.
“They told me that they have been shelling some areas under YPG control north of Manbij”.
As IS fighters melted away, however, Turkish troops involved in “Operation Euphrates Shield” clashed with the Kurdish YPG militia, part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
In a major blow to ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by USA airstrikes, drove ISIS from Manbij last month following a lengthy siege.
An opposition monitoring group and a news agency linked with the Islamic State group say a suicide attacker has targeted Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria. “A US consulate delegation attended the ceremony of returning the three corpses as they were handed over to them”, Shawkat Berbahari said. “And their operations along the border against ISIL are extraordinarily important and welcome”. “We see the need to continue to work with both of these organizations as we move forward and address our principal threat, which is the Islamic State”. Around 30 photographs show PKK, PYD and YPG terrorists in northern Syria, with certain regions labelled “cantons” in the captions. A cease-fire with the group was “out of the question”, Kalin said.
In a commentary for Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper, analyst Yusuf Kanli sought to explain the dilemma for the U.S.in Turkey’s cross-border action.
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Turkey has said Syria was informed in advance of the operation by Russian Federation. “While that was one of the targets, the bigger and more important target for Turkey was to deliver a strong message to the PYD that Turkey would not let it move toward establishing statehood and would take every possible measure to not allow a Kurdish state carved out from its territory”, Kanli said.
