Alwaght- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday his country will continue its military operations in northern Syria with aim of repelling Kurdish militants away from its borders.
The so-called Euphrates Shield operation spans Syria’s Afrin and Manbij regions. Ankara launched the mission in 2016, saying it sought to fight off the ISIS terror group. Later, however, it was seen using the drive to push against the Kurds.
Turkey associates the Kurdish militants in Syria with the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting a decades-long separatist war against Ankara.
Speaking to his party's lawmakers on, Recep Tayyip Erdogan "It is time to block the separatist terror group [Kurdish militants] from forming a terror corridor along Syria".
"We will complete this process by securing all our borders," he added, referring to a possible Afrin operation.
The Turkish operation, however, comes without the Syrian government’s permission, prompting repeated calls by Damascus to stop its military intervention.
Despite angering Syria on the matter, Turkey, along with Russia and Iran, has made great diplomatic strides to help end the crisis in Syria.
The trio has been mediating a peace process in Astana, Kazakhstan, between Syria’s warring sides since January 2016.
Separately, Erdogan branded a United States legal case against a Turkish banker as a “political coup attempt” and a joint effort by the CIA and the FBI to undermine Turkey.
"The people who were unsuccessful in the July 15 [2016] coup attempt in our country are seeking out new coup attempts," he warned, saying the Atilla case was a "political" coup.
Last week, a jury in New York found Mehmet Hakan Atilla guilty on five of six counts he faced, including bank fraud and conspiracy to violate US sanctions law.
Erdogan said the CIA, the FBI and the network of Fetullah Gulen, a US-based cleric, whom Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup against the Turkish administration, were working together, using the case to undermine Ankara.
