The U.S. moved troops and armored vehicles through several Syrian cities and towns on Friday and Saturday in a show of force apparently meant to dissuade Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces from attacking each other.
Tensions rose Saturday along the Turkish-Syrian border as both Turkey and the United States moved armored vehicles to the region and Turkey's leader once again demanded that the United States stop supporting Syrian Kurdish militants there.
Ankara says the fighters of the YPG are merely the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have waged an insurgency since 1984 inside Turkey that has left tens of thousands dead.
Erdogan is due in Washington on May 16 for his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
"I am seeing signs that Trump.will display a more decisive stance in the fight against terrorism and in ending state terror in Syria", he said.
Confirming that the proxy war in Syria is becoming ever less so, the USA has recently shifted from working quietly behind the scenes in Syria's conflict toward overt displays of US force in an attempt to shape the fight. Turkey has said the strikes were conducted to prevent infiltration of Kurdish rebels, weapons, ammunition and explosives from Syria and northern Iraq into Turkey. The Kurdish group in Syria said that 20 of its fighters and media activists were killed in the strike, which was followed by cross-border clashes.
The Kurdish outlet Rudaw published a video Friday of military vehicles with American flags traveling through Darbasiyah, northeast Syria, by the Turkish border.
Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said the US was "deeply concerned" about the airstrikes, adding that the raids were "not approved" by the USA -led coalition fighting against ISIS.
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Lawmakers also called out airline executives on "contracts of carriage" which customers must sign when purchasing a plane ticket. The White House has not weighed in on whether new rules are needed to respond to airline customer service issues.
"This needs to be stopped right now", said Erdogan.
The Turkish government is pressuring Washington to stop backing Kurdish fighters as an ally in the fight against IS jihadists in Syria, in a dispute that has has limited cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies.
According to Reuters, some 120,000 people from a wide range of professions have already been sacked in Turkey's post-coup purge, and more than 40,000 have been arrested.
He reiterated his position that he does not want the United States to use the YPG in the fight to take Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria.
Operation Euphrates Shield was launched on August 24 to push Daesh and Kurdish forces out of cities and settlements located on Syria's border with Turkey.
Khalil said his forces are not building up in the area and added that the global coalition is now "monitoring" the border. "They had been mostly bombing border areas", Barzani said. "We may come [to strike the YPG] overnight, all of a sudden without warning", Erdoğan told reporters at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport before leaving for a two-day visit to India.
The monitoring had not yet begun, but the forces would report to senior US commanders, Sharvan Kobani told Reuters after meeting USA military officials in the town of Darbasiya next to the Turkish border.
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