However, after the Turkish Armed Forces’ recent military operation entitled “Shield of the Euphrates” and the joint efforts of the worldwide coalition and the Free Syrian Army, the balance of forces in northern Syria, has greatly changed.
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The army said in the statement carried by NTV television that the deaths came in a rocket attack on two Turkish tanks.
The army said on Tuesday that the ISIL attack took place in the Wuquf village, south of al-Rai, where Turkish tanks opened a second front in their Syria operation at the weekend. “One of the branches is created to meet Turkey’s internal needs, while other branch is for transit to Europe”.
Russian Federation condemns the Turkish operation but is refraining from criticizing Ankara too harshly, said Gumer Isayev, head of the St. Petersburg-based Centre of Contemporary Middle East Studies, adding that there is a certain degree of coordination between Russian Federation and Turkey.
Turkey would be ready to join any initiative proposed by the United States to capture an Islamic State stronghold in Syria, President Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks published on Wednesday, as Turkish-backed forces took more Syrian land from jihadists.
Turkey has called its operation a success and IS fighters have been expelled from their last positions along the Turkish-Syrian border.
Speaking to reporters on his plane back from the G20 summit in China on Monday, Erdogan said Turkey’s military was ready to join any offensive on Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital.
Ankara wants global support to take control of a rectangle of territory stretching about 40 km into Syria, creating a buffer between two Kurdish-held cantons to the east and west and against Islamic State to the south.
Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 91-km area stretching from Jarablus to Azaz to the west.
Turkish television showed pictures of military helicopters flying across the border to take the wounded for treatment in Turkey.
“Our 91km border has been completely secured”, he said during a televised speech.
Meanwhile, it was reported that Wuquf and Sadwi villages were seized from IS by FSA members.
It is an important achievement that was mainly prompted by recent gains against Daesh made by People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria. Not that President Recep Tayyib Erdogan loves Islamic State – he used to let it use Turkey as a transit route for recruits and supplies, but that largely stopped a year ago – but he doesn’t see it as Turkey’s main enemy.
The HIMARS system has been deployed near the Turkish Armed Forces’ defense missile system in the Almalitepe region of the southeastern province of Gaziantep, the reports said.
However, there have been signs of a rapprochement on Syria between the two countries after a deal to normalise crisis-hit relations, with Ankara acknowledging Assad could temporarily stay on in a transition.
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Kalin said that Putin told Erdogan in China that the operation, which has now lasted two weeks, had his “full support”.
