Turkey vows ground operation in Syria ‘soon’

istanbul: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Tuesday that Turkey would “soon” unleash a ground operation into Syria against Kurdish targets in defiance of mounting international pressure.

Ankara launched a series of air strikes in Operation Claw-sword on Sunday -- hiting dozens of Kurdish targets across Iraq and Syria -- and announcing that its military was once again “on top of the terrorists.”

The air raids followed a bombing in Istanbul that killed six people and wounded 81.

Turkey blamed the atack on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is blacklisted as a terror group by the European Union and the United States.

The Turkish leader has threatened a new military operation into northern Syria since May and upped those threats in the wake of this month’s atack. “We have been on top of terrorists for a few days with our planes, cannons and drones,” Erdogan told a ceremony in the Black Sea province of Artvin.

“God willing, we will root out all of them soon with our tanks, artillery and soldiers.”

The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, denied any role in the Nov.13 bombing -- the deadliest in five years ater a spate of atacks in Turkey between 2015 and 2017.

The United States late Monday urged deescalation and Russia said on Tuesday it hoped Turkey would exercise “restraint” and refrain from “excessive use of force” in Syria.

“We understand and respect Turkey’s concerns regarding its own security. We still call on all parties to refrain from steps that could lead to seriously destabilising the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Erdogan said on Tuesday his government knew “who protects, arms and encourages those terrorists,” in a veiled reference to Washington, which relied heavily on Syrian Kurdish forces in the fight against the Daesh militant group.

He said Turkey was patient enough, “not because it was desperate,” but because it was loyal to diplomacy.