The leaders also discussed details of the so-called “Operation Shield Euphrates”, agreeing on the importance of evicting all terrorist groups in the Syrian border area with Turkey.
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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.
Operation Euphrates Shield was launched on August 24 when Free Syrian Army forces backed by Turkish military liberated Jarablus from Daesh.
Turkey has said it cleared militants from a 90-kilometer stretch of Syrian territory and has pushed south.
Canikli said that 110 enemy forces had been killed in the Turkish operation so far, including both I.S. and YPG fighters.
But Turkey’s tactics have drawn criticism from its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally the United States and also from Russian Federation, with which it recently patched up ties.
Turkish-backed militia drove ISIS from the border town of Jarablus, but Turkey has also been concerned with checking the advance of Kurdish forces whom it regarded as terrorists.
Turkish army forces bombed the Kurdish town of Afrin in Aleppo province in northern Syria with heavy artillery on Thursday, causing casualties among civilians, activists and eyewitnesses reported.
It also said Carter had assured his Turkish counterpart of continued US support for Turkey’s efforts to clear Daesh from its borders.
Loaded with luggage and domestic items, the residents headed for the frontier and queued for customs inspection at the border gate outside the Turkish town of Karkamis, an AFP photographer said.
Moscow adds that the operation could “negatively affect worldwide efforts to devise a settlement platform that would ensure a more sustainable ceasefire, uninterrupted humanitarian access and would provide a solid foundation for conciliation and overcoming the crisis in this country”.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime were pushed out of Raqa, which lies on the Euphrates River, in 2013, making it the first provincial capital in Syria to fall out of government control.
It is also to prevent the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) from establishing a continuous corridor along Turkey’s southern border.
“Obama particularly wants to do something together [with us] about Raqqa”, Erdogan said, according to the daily Hurriyet.
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However, Turkey’s continuing wish to implement a no-fly zone over northern Syria has not gained any traction with USA officials.
