Free Republic

Speaking during his visit to Bahrein in a joint press meeting with the country’s Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Turkish President Erdogan commented on his army’s Euphrates Shield operation in the north of Syria.Erdogan said, “The step we took [in al-Bab] is locked onto a target. After this if we can take joint steps with coalition forces we will go towards Manbij and Raqqa. There we will form a safe zone in which we will allow for mainly our Arab and Turkmen brothers and sisters to settle into.”Turkey has been a long-time supporter of forming safe zones in Syria. Until...

Sep 18, 2004 Turkey snaps over US bombing of its bretheren By K Gajendra Singh For the first time since the acrimonious exchange of words in July last year following the arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish commandos in Kurdish Iraq, for which Washington expressed "regret", differences erupted publicly this week between North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies Turkey and the US over attacks on Turkey's ethnic cousins, the Turkmens in northern Iraq. Talking to a Turkish TV channel, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned that if the US did not cease its attacks on Tal Afar, a Turkmen city at the...

ANKARA - Richard Myers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States wanted to work with Turkey in Iraq, but Turkey will make its own decision on sending peacekeepers to Iraq. Myers, as well as the Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, attended a reception late Thursday in Washington, hosted by the Turkish Armed Forces' attache. Turkey is one of the countries that Washington has requested to send troops to Iraq to help stabilization of the war-torn country. Government officials have signaled that a decision was unlikely to come in September and said Parliament could convene in...