Turkey Sends More Tanks to Syria, Demands Kurdish Fighters Withdrawal
Asharq Al-Awsat English 25 August 2016
http://english.aawsat.com/2016/08/article55357121/turkey-sends-tanks-syria-demands-kurdish-fighters-withdrawal

Demanding Kurdish militia to retreat within a week, Turkey sent more tanks
into northern Syria on Thursday. The artillery was directed as to secure the
border region and drive back ultra-hardline ISIS militants to neighboring
Syria.

Syrian opposition members backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and
warplanes on Wednesday entered Jarablus, one of ISIS’ last strongholds on
the Turkish-Syrian border.

Some of the blasts were triggered as Turkish security forces cleared mines
and booby traps left by retreating ISIS gunmen, according to Nuh Kocaaslan,
the mayor of Karkamis, which sits just across the border from Jarablus.

Three Syrian opposition fighters were killed during the operation to retake
Jarablus, one of them when he opened the door of a house rigged with
explosives, Kocaaslan told reporters. There were no casualties among the
Turkish troops.

According to Reuters, President Tayyip Erdogan and senior government
officials have made clear the aim of “Operation Euphrates Shield” is as much
about stopping the Kurdish YPG militia seizing territory and filling the
void left by ISIS as about eliminating the radical group itself.

Turkey, which has NATO’s second biggest armed forces, demanded that the YPG
retreat to the east side of the Euphrates river within a week. The Kurdish
militia had moved west of the river earlier this month as part of a
U.S.-backed operation, now completed, to capture the city of Manbij from
ISIS.

Ankara views the YPG as a threat because of its close links to Kurdish
militants waging a three-decade-old insurgency on its own soil. It has been
alarmed by the YPG’s gains in northern Syria since the start of the Syrian
civil war in 2011, fearing it could extend Kurdish control along Turkish
borders and fuel the ambitions of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.

Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik said preventing the Kurdish PYD party –
the political arm of the YPG – from uniting Kurdish cantons east of Jarablus
with those further west was a priority.

“ISIS should be completely cleansed, this is an absolute must. But it’s not
enough for us…. The PYD and the YPG militia should not replace Islamic State
there,” Isik told Turkish broadcaster NTV.

“The PYD’s biggest dream is to unify the western and eastern cantons. We
cannot let this happen,” he said.