Türkiye may start ground offensive in Syria 'at any moment,' says presidential spokesperson

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Türkiye may launch a ground offensive in northern Syria "at any time," Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said late on Monday (November 28).

During a live program on A Haber TV channel, Kalın said, "Of course, we are not in a position to state if it will be today or tomorrow. It could be tomorrow, next week or any moment. There can be different kinds of operations. These operations can be carried out at any time."

The spokesperson said that "the operations will continue to be carried out from now on just as they were until today" and also talked about the attitude of the US and Russia on a possible ground offensive.

"There is nothing such as taking permission"

"Of course, as a responsible state, we evaluate and talk about such operations with our allies, with neighboring countries. There is nothing lsuch as giving information in advance or taking permission."

"With the US, with Russia, when necessary with Iran, elsewhere with other countries, with the office holders in Iraq when we carry out an operation in Iraq, we talk about these at all levels. But sometimes in public debate, there are things such as 'the US is annoyed, or Russia said this or that..."

"They may be annoyed, they may communicate their positions, they may place their positions on record, but these do not affect the steps we will take in any way. We are telling this directly to them clearly anyhow.

"In the field, when it is said that there are US soldiers here and they should not suffer any damage, that it should be coordinated, that we should be careful, of course, we have never until today targeted the US soldiers or soldiers of Russia directly, we do not have such an intention, it is clear what our target is."

"No '30 kilometer' offer from the US"

Kalın also responded to a question related to an offer for the US soldiers to be posted 30 kilometers from the border.

The speaker said, "There is no such offer from the US. However, the 2019 agreement already had the condition that these agents should be withdrawn 30 kilometers south. We have made our interventions when they did not obey. Or we have made our operations again in this framework.

"When we talked about this, officials from both the US and Russia said "Yes you are right. The party not following the agreement is PYD/YPG" confirming our position each time. We are in a similar situation at the moment again. We are telling the same thing. We say, "Stay 30 kilometers away from the border. Do not try to penetrate into Türkiye. When you do these, we will answer immediately."

Will there be a meeting with Assad?

Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın also replied to a question on if the President and Head of Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President of Syria, Bashar Assad are going to meet.

Kalın said, "President Erdoğan stated clearly. 'There is no room for bad feelings in politics for long.' A meeting, a contact at different levels can take place in the framework of interests of Türkiye when the time comes."

Stating that contacts always continue with Syria on intelligence levels, Kalın said, "This is the job of the intelligence agencies. We control this situation both in Egypt, in Iraq, and in other areas. The intelligence agencies take up issues such as the hitting of the PKK targets, how far the regime forces will advance." (SD/PE)