Alwaght- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Saturday the military operation in Syria's Afrin has "actively" started amid opposition by Damascus.
"The Afrin operation has actively begun on the field. The Manbij operation will follow," he said during a televised speech in the Aegean province of Kutahya. The Turkish leader added that the operation in the border town of Afrin would be followed by a push in the northern town of Manbij.
Reports said that Turkish fighter jets carried out 11 raids on the villages of Ain Dikneh, Mariamin, Tal Rif'at, Kafr Jannah, Maranaz and villages in the vicinity of Afrin in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
Afrin and Manbij are controlled by the YPG, which Ankara views as a terror organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkey has in recent days sent dozens of military vehicles and hundreds of troops to the border area. Over the past two days, Turkish forces have been shelling YPG targets around Afrin.
According to estimates, there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Kurdish fighters in the Afrin area of Syria.
Erdogan said that all Kurdish armed groups "are all the same" and that changing their names "does not change the fact that they are terror organizations".
The Turkish president noted that the United States has not kept its promise of withdrawing YPG militia in Manbij after their alleged fight with the ISIS terrorist group.
He slammed the US decision to establish a new border army with the YPG fighters in order to secure Turkish and Iraqi borders with Syria.
Erdogan said the statements from Washington were contradictory. "We do not care about what they say. We only consider what happens on the ground," he said.
On Thursday Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad warned Turkey against launching a military operation in the country’s northwestern region of Afrin, stressing that Syrian air defense systems are prepared to repel such an attack.
Elsewhere Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also asserted that Washington’s decision to form a zone held by US-backed militants could lead to the division of the Arab country.
