Meanwhile, Turkish EU minister Omer Celik said that operation Euphrates Shield will continue because Turkey would not want to see headquarters and flags of Kurdish Workers’ Party and ISIS on the borders.
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In a separate development, Syrian military forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad recaptured parts of Aleppo they lost to rebels, the BBC reported. The operation was dubbed the “Shield of the Euphrates”.
To the north of Aleppo, fighting between Turkish-backed rebels and the Islamic State group intensified Sunday near the rebel-held town of al-Rai, near the Turkish border.
The advance took place little more than a week after Turkey launched the Syrian incursion, deploying tanks and air power to support the rebels, who swept into the border town of Jarablus.
Monitors said the presence of so-called Islamic State (IS) on the border had been ended.
In an exclusive interview with Trend, Armagan Kuloglu, a retired lieutenant-general of the Turkish armed forces and expert on national security, said Turkey can launch new operations against PYD in the city of Afrin in northwestern Syria as a lever of political pressure.
The Kurdish YPG militia is a key partner of the US-led coalition against ISIL, and has recaptured large swaths of territory in Syria from the group.
The timing of the operation surprised Washington and the faster-than-expected victory resulted in a major clash between Turkish military units, which moved south to secure the road between Jarablus and Manbij, and Syrian Kurdish militants in the area. We are also defending Syria’s territorial integrity.
With Turkey’s rapid success in less than two weeks, his position looks stronger with territory in between the two Kurdish “cantons” of Afrin and Kobane now in the hands of Ankara-backed rebels.
Share your own views about the long running civil war in Syria and also why the Turkish government should not suppress the Kurdish group who are ethnic to the land.
A wall along the border between Turkey and Syria is pictured near the southeastern town of Deliosman in Kilis province, Turkey, August 29, 2016.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with US President Barack Obama at the G20 gathering of world leaders in China, Erdogan said: “It is our wish that a terror corridor not be formed across our southern border”.
State TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that troops are now in full control of the military academies south of Aleppo and are “chasing the remnant of terrorists”.
It has been roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, but in recent months regime forces slowly began to encircle the east.
On Aug. 13, US -backed Syrian rebels, led by the Kurdish militia known as the YPG, took control of Manbij from Islamic State, cutting a major supply route between Raqqa, the extremists’ de facto capital in Syria, and the Turkish border.
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The areas in which Turkey and the rebels it backed are operating have been cleared of nonarmed personnel, he said, amid claims that Kurdish civilians have been killed.
