Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his party’s parliamentary group meeting at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara on January 8, 2019.
Adem Altan | AFP | Getty Images
Turkey has launched a military operation in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, days after the Trump administration announced it would pull U.S. troops away from the area.
“Turkish Armed Forces together with the Syrian National Army against PKK / YPG and Deash terrorist organizations in northern Syria #BarışPınarıHarekatı has started,” Erdogan wrote on Twitter, according to that site’s translation feature.
“Our aim is to destroy the terror corridor which is trying to be established on our southern border and to bring peace and peace to the region,” Erdogan tweeted.
Turkey’s long-expected incursion in northern Syria came less than a week after Trump spoke with Erdogan on the phone. After the call, the White House announced that “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria” and “United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”
The abrupt foreign policy move was met with immediate bipartisan criticism, with lawmakers accusing the Trump administration of abandoning the Kurdish forces in the area who helped the U.S. fight ISIS forces. Turkey and Kurdish groups have clashed for years, and Ankara has recently signaled that it planned to carry out operations against the Kurds near Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, tweeted Wednesday that “Turkish warplanes have started to carry out airstrikes on civilian areas.”
Trump took to Twitter to justify the decision to withdraw.
“It is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home,” Trump tweeted Monday. “WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.”
Syrian National Army forces are dispatched to Manbij front line ahead of Turkey’s planned operation in the east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria in Aleppo, Syria on October 08, 2019.
Bekir Kasim | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
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