“I said our soldiers should come together and discuss, then what is necessary will be done”, Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet daily.
Advertisement
“Obama wants to do something together especially on the issue of Raqa”, he said. “We have always said that if we do not support local forces on the ground, if there is no land operation, it will not be possible to eliminate or even stop Daesh exclusively from the air”, he said.
Mr Erdogan said US President Barack Obama floated the idea of joint action against the militants when they met at the G20 summit in China. “The Free Syrian Army forces supported by Turkey, had succeeded to control this area through its Euphrates Shield operation”, the source said.
No details have been given as to what a Turkish role might amount to but clearly if Raqqa is attacked then the zone approaching the Turkish border to the north of the city needs to be secured to block the withdrawal of fleeing IS forces. The opposition said the roadmap would start with six months of negotiations based on the Geneva Statement, to be followed by a transitional phase of 18 months during which a transitional administration will be formed without Bashar Assad.
Ankara fears that continued military successes by the YPG could consolidate an autonomous Kurdish region on its border and encourage Turkey’s own Kurdish separatist movement, the PKK, with which the Syrian Kurdish movement is politically aligned.
On August 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force with the support of the US -led coalition launched an operation in Syria’s northern border city of Jarabulus to clear the area from the Daesh terror organization.
Raqqa’s fall was a key point in the rise of IS as it seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, and is now considered the jihadists’ de facto capital.
Since 2015, a total of 1,223 foreign nationals were detained by Turkish authorities over suspected links to IS, 434 of whom were placed under arrest by the courts, said the official.
Turkey has been alarmed by U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People s Protection Units (YPG) militia which Ankara sees as a “terrorist” group linked to its own Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been waging a bloody campaign against the Turkish state.
“From now on, we have to show that we exist in the region”. The “Islamic State” (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.
Erdogan said that after the G20 he was optimistic of the chances of a ceasefire between opposition forces and Assad s regime, in time for the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, which gets under way next week.
Advertisement
Turkey has backed its own “rebels”, comprised of Sunni Turkmen and Arab Islamist militias, to not only attack ISIS but drive the Kurdish forces out of areas that they had wrested from ISIS with United States backing.
