“Turkey is determined to take steps to ensure the safety of its citizens both at home and in neighboring countries where terror groups are nestled”, Erdogan said in a message commemorating the August 30 Victory Day, Anadolu Agency reports.
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Turkey is a close US ally, and the operation was backed up by Turkish and American airstrikes.
At the same time, Kurdish elements were taking more villages around Manbij, and not retreating as they had promised the U.S. Some Kurdish leaders also indicated that their next military objective would be Jarablus, a Syrian town on the Turkish border, instead of Raqqa.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey will press ahead with its military operation in Syria until the Islamic State group and the Kurdish Syrian fighters no longer pose a security threat to Ankara.
Turkey has faced considerable worldwide criticism for targeting the Kurds in Syria, though EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik today insisted no nation has any right to tell Turkey “which terrorist organization to fight against and which one to ignore”. He did not, however, mention the US comments.
But critics have suggested Turkey’s military action in Syria is simply a pretext for the country seeking occupation of war-torn Syria.
On Monday, fighting escalated between Kurdish Forces in north Syria and Syrian opposition factions backed by Ankara in west Euphrates, to replace the original battles that should have aimed to attack ISIS members in the area.
Both Turkey and the United States have ordered the YPG militia to withdraw to the east bank of the river.
Turkey’s state-run news agency says three rockets fired from Syria have hit a Turkish border town, wounding five children between 8 years and 12 years of age.
The US branded their offensive battling against ISIS and Kurdish Syrian fighters “unacceptable”.
In the first days of the invasion, which began while Vice President Joe Biden was in Ankara, US officials indicated their support for the Turkish attack, hoping that it would help create better conditions for realizing the main US goal of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Iran and Russian Federation. It accuses the YPG of seeking to take territory where there has not traditionally been a strong Kurdish ethnic contingent.
Earlier this month, United States officials had praised the YPG-dominated “Syrian Democratic Forces” for their liberation of the IS-held town of Manbij on the western side of the Euphrates.
But after an easy victory against ISIS, the Syrian rebels headed further south to take on Kurdish fighters?.
Turkey declared any incursion west of the Euphrates River by the YPG a red line at a National Security Council (MGK) meeting on June 29, 2015. The Erdogan regime regards the advance of the YPG in Syria as a deadly threat, when combined with the existence of a Kurdish Regional Authority in northern Iraq, and the renewed attacks by the PKK in southeastern Turkey itself.
On Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said areas south of Jarabulus were experiencing heavy bombardment by Turkish forces as well as clashes between the rebels and Kurdish-led groups.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the USA would not change course on its support for the SDF, adding that US strategy “has been very successful”.
In general, the results of the military operation “Shield of the Euphrates” are successful: groups of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with the support of the Turkish Armed Forces liberated more than 33 settlements from the IS in northern Syria near the city of Jarabulus on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
“The YPG has to immediately cross east of the Euphrates River as they promised the United States and as they announced they would”, said Mr Cavusoglu.
The situation in northern Syria is yet another complication in the country’s already tangled civil war, and potentially throws a wrench in USA plans to defeat the Islamic State group in the region.
Turkey’s dramatic intervention in Syria could prove a setback for the Islamic State group – but it forces the United States to make a hard choice between two unpredictable allies.
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Meanwhile, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter called on Turkey to only focus on Daesh targets.
