Erdogan set the tone for his latest campaign against the Kurds at a rally in Istanbul a few days after the coup attempt, when the Turkish leader addressed a massive crowd waving banners with such IS-style slogans as, “Order us to die, and we will do so”.
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In July 2015, a Turkish soldier was killed after IS militants shot across the border into Turkey.
Two members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is backed by the Turkish military in their advance on IS in Syria, were also killed while two others were wounded.
Earlier when Turkey first put forward the idea of closing the airspace over northern Syria, the territories were mainly controlled by militants of the “Islamic State” (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) and the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD, the Kurdish political party).
Turkey considers both the Islamic State and Kurdish militias to be “terrorist organisations”.
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.
IS released a statement saying they used guided missiles to take out the tanks, alongside a suicide attack on Turkish-supported rebels in the region.
Captain Abdelsalam Abdelrazaq, the military spokesman for Nour e-Din a-Zinki, emphasized the importance of Turkish support to his fighters’ recent advances in northern Aleppo. “Especially in opening gaps in enemy defenses and fortifications, as we do not have any materiel for this offensive task”.
Washington dispatched a top envoy to meet with allied Kurdish forces inside Syria last week, a State Department official said Monday, following tensions after Turkey began operations in the war-torn country. “This is a Turkish matter; we have not been informed of anything”.
If he had been loyal to Turkey’s alliance with the United States and closed the border with Syria, neither Islamic State or the rival Islamist movement, the Nusra Front, would have grown to dominate the entire Syrian rebel movement.
Yildirim said Turkey would never allow the formation of an artificial state in the north of Syria.
The fact that now the FSA military units control almost half of the areas in northern Syria became the main result of the “Shield of the Euphrates” operation.
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In Hangzhou, China, meanwhile, President Barack Obama said the US and Russian Federation have not given up on negotiations to halt the bloodshed in Syria, but acknowledged that “gaps of trust” exist between the rival powers. “I said there would be no problem from our perspective”.
