Erdogan has not mentioned “operation in Syria” for last 10 days
President Tayyip Erdogan, who has often signaled an operation in Syria recently, has not mentioned the operation in his speeches for the last 10 days. Erdogan’s silence regarding said operation brought to mind warning statements from the Russian and NATO fronts.
Erdogan who made statements about plans to carry out an operation to Syria several times before, had said after the Cabinet meeting on May 23, “We’re starting to take new steps regarding the remaining parts of the work we began earlier to create safe zones along our southern border with a depth of 30 km”
He made another statement on June 1 at a group meeting of his party, directly pointing to the north of Syria and said, “We are clearing Tel Rifat and Manbij of terrorists. Then we will do the same in other regions in stages. Let’s see who will support these legitimate security steps of Turkey, we’ll see who will try to be an obstacle.”
Another of Erdogan’s statements in which he gave a message about action in Syria was the following words he expressed at his party’s meeting on June 4: “We will address security concerns with new operations”.
NO STATEMENT REGRADING THE ISSUE FOR 10 DAYS
Looking at Erdogan’s speeches on the presidential website, it was seen that he last used the phrase action against Syria in his speech after following the Efes-2022 military exercise, on June 9. In this speech, Erdogan also drew attention to the allies and said: “I would like to express once again here that we will never allow the establishment of terror corridors at the bottom of our country’s borders, and that we will definitely complete the missing parts of our security line for this purpose. We hope that no real allies and friends of ours will oppose these legitimate security concerns of our country, and in particular will not use their preference in favor of terrorist organizations. Of course, we have the right to expect our allies and friends to understand and respect our legitimate concerns about this issue.”
HAS CONCERNS PUT PLANS ON HOLD
The President has not referred to “Operation in Syria” again since June 9. Erdogan’s operation signals were followed by “worried” statements about the operation from Russia and the United States.
Russia’s representative in Syria, Aleksandr Lavrentyev, had said that Russia was trying to convince Turkey to cancel its plans to conduct military operations in Syria during the talks in Kazakhstan.
The US State Department also said they were ‘concerned’ about Turkey’s plans to launch an operation.
