ISTANBUL: Turkey’s president has renewed a pledge for a cross-border military operation into northeastern Syria.In a speech Sunday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “We’ve entered Afrin, Jarablus, Al-Bab. Now we will enter the east of the Euphrates.”Talks between US and Turkish officials have stalled over creating a safe zone in Syria east of the Euphrates River. The aim is to address Turkey’s security concerns about Syrian Kurdish militias in the region.Turkey views these Kurdish militias — who battled the Daesh group alongside US forces — as terrorists, allied with a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.Erdogan added: “We have shared this with the US and Russia.”Turkey conducted two operations into northern Syria in 2016 and 2018 to clear the areas of IS extremists and US-backed Syrian Kurdish militias.
