Its military campaign aimed to help Syrian rebels drive the Islamic State group out of the border town of Jarablus, but was also directed against the USA -led allied Kurdish forces that have gained control of most of the territory along the Turkey-Syria border in recent months.
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Meanwhile, US military officials have told CNN that Turkish and Kurdish forces have stopped fighting each other for the time being.
Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” and insisted the army was doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.
The U.S.is backing both Kurdish fighters and Turkey in the multilayered Syrian war, even as the two sides have exchanged fire inside northern Syria over the past three days.
“We call on all armed actors to stand down”, he wrote on Twitter, citing a U.S. Department of Defense statement.
They said they will withdraw in order for the rebels not to “have any justification to continue shelling civilians”.
U.S. President Barack Obama will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China, the White House said Monday.
The Turkish leader issued a message on Monday saying Ankara was determined to take all steps necessary both inside Turkey and overseas to protect Turkish citizens.
Syrian opposition activists have said that at least 35 civilians were killed in the Turkish-led operation so far. He did not, however, mention the US comments.
A Turkish tank stationed near the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey, Monday, Aug. 29, 2016. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sought to patch up ties in a visit last week, just as Turkish forces entered Syria.
The Turkish military carried out 61 artillery strikes around Jarablus over the past 24 hours, Reuters news agency reported yesterday.
The operations have left Turkey exposed to reprisal attacks by Islamic State and Kurdish militants, both blamed for a string of bombings over the past year.
Turkey’s president vowed to press ahead with the military operation until IS and Kurdish Syrian fighters no longer pose a security threat to Ankara. To reach Al-Bab, the Turkish force would have to fight its way through Kurdish-controlled territory.
A group monitoring the tangled, five-year-old conflict in Syria said 41 people were killed by Turkish air strikes as Turkish forces pushed south on Sunday.
But Turkey considers the YPG a “terrorist” group and said Monday it would continue to target the YPG if it failed to retreat east of the Euphrates River.
In two messages sent on Monday to the U.N. chief, Ban Ki-moon, and the resident of the U.N. Security Council, Syria’s Foreign Ministry accused Turkey of committing “full-fledged crimes against humanity”. The YPG, he claimed, was out of Jarablus and Manbij, “Because the YPG are east of the Euphrates”. While the Kurdish forces are divided politically, Ankara fears efforts to link up Kurdish speakers in southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq in a future independent Kurdistan.
In comments published Tuesday in the pro-government newspaper, Daily Sabah, Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin called on the U.S.to “revise their policy of supporting (the Kurdish-led force) at all costs”.
Polat Can, a Kurdish representative to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said on Twitter that the USA -led coalition would oversee the cease-fire with the Jarablus Military Council.
A spokesman for Kurdish-led forces in Syria is reporting clashes between the fighters and Islamic State militants near the northern town of Manbij, which was until recently held by the extremist group.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations, the official told AFP the YPG had headed east over the past day or so.
Among their first demands to cease the operation was for the YPG to move east of the Euphrates River, after successes against ISIS moved them west of the river and closer to Turkey.
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Turkey, which is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its soil, has said its campaign has a dual goal of “cleansing” the region of Islamic State and stopping Kurdish forces filling the void and extending the area they control near Turkey’s border.
