Turkey ‘obliged’ to press on to Syria’s Al-Bab

Turkish-backed forces will press on to the Daesh-held town of Al-Bab in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, emphasising Ankara’s drive to sweep militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from territory near its border.

Backed by Turkish tanks, special forces and airstrikes, a group of moderate Syrian rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) crossed into northern Syria in August and took the border town of Jarablus from Daesh largely unopposed.

The FSA have since extended those gains and now control an area of roughly 1,270 square kilometres across northern Syria, including the symbolic town of Dabiq, the subject of a Daesh prophecy.

While Turkey’s initial focus was on driving Daesh from border towns, much of its efforts have been spent on stopping the advance of US-backed Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters, whom Ankara deems as a terrorist organisation linked to the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“They say, ‘Don’t go to Al-Bab’. We are obliged to, we will go there,” Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of an education centre in the northwest province of Bursa. “We have to prepare a region cleansed from terror.”

Al-Bab is 30 kilometres from opposition-held eastern Aleppo, currently besieged by the Russia and Iran-backed Assad regime.

Erdogan also said that Turkey would do what was necessary with its coalition partners in Syria’s Raqqa, also held by Daesh militants, but would not work with the YPG fighters.

Differences over Syria have caused strains between NATO allies Turkey and the United States.

Washington backs the YPG militia, seeing it as an effective partner in the fight against Daesh. Turkey fears the militia’s advance will embolden Kurdish militants at home.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has carried out a three-decade insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people throughout Turkey. The PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by the US, Turkey, UK and the EU.

The Turkish military confirmed today that it had hit 72 Daesh and 50 Syrian Kurdish targets in northern Syria yesterday morning.