Turkey, US kick off patrol mission in Syria's Manbij
ANKARA - Turkish and US armies have started a patrol mission in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, Turkish leadership announced on Monday.
"We had said the terror organizations would get out. They started to get out. The patrolling has started," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a rally in northern Samsun province of Turkey.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkish soldiers have not entered the Manbij city yet, but they will enter stage by stage.
The Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, will be removed from Manbij and Turkish army will continue to work for stability of the region, he said, noting that they want to implement the Manbij plan in other cities of Syria as well.
"I hope we will implement this plan in Manbij, then move to other cities. Our goal is to get YPG out of all the regions they control," the minister said.
In a statement, the Turkish Armed Forces confirmed the patrol mission with the US on Monday. The joint forces carried out patrols in an area overlooking the US base in Syria's Dadat town which lasted around three hours, Anadolu Agency reported.
The move came after a deal between Cavusoglu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on June 4 over the Manbij roadmap that brings about the retreat of YPG elements from Manbij.
Ankara has long been exerting pressure on Washington for withdrawal of Syrian Kurds in Manbij to the east of the Euphrates River since the group built up its military and administrative power in the region after defeating the Islamic State group there in 2016.
Turkey accuses the YPG of having ethnically cleansed Arabs and other minorities from the areas it captured during the Syrian civil war in order to establish a Kurdish entity in northern Syria.
Therefore, Turkey has asked the US to establish a new administrative model in Manbij and in other disputed regions where the demography will be fairly represented.
The US troops were stationed alongside YPG militants in Manbij following an offensive against the Islamic State, a move that irked Ankara, who sees the Kurdish group as Syrian branch of Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Xinhua
(China Daily 06/20/2018 page11)
