Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that the "safe zone" to be set up in northern Syria was aimed at clearing the border of terrorist elements and returning refugees safely to Syria as part of Syrian territorial integrity.
Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote the comment on Twitter after the White House press secretary said Turkey would soon press ahead with its operation in northern Syria.
The US press secretary said yesterday that the armed forces will not participate or support an operation planned by Ankara in northern Syria.
He added that his country's forces "after defeating the caliphate of the Islamic State will no longer be present in the vicinity."
The US statement said Turkey would now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the region who have been detained over the past two years.
Turkish position
The US position comes after a telephone conversation between President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which they discussed the issues of the safe area east of the Euphrates (northern Syria) as well as bilateral and regional affairs.
According to a statement by the Turkish presidency, Erdogan assured Trump that the establishment of a safe area is a condition to eliminate the threat of the PKK - which he described as terrorist - and a condition to create conditions for the return of Syrian refugees to their country.
The Turkish president also stressed that his country has taken the necessary measures in order not to renew the threat of ISIS in Syria.
Erdogan told Trump that he was "frustrated by the failure of the US military and security bureaucracy to implement the agreement" signed by the two sides last August on the establishment of a buffer zone on the Syrian border with Turkey, the statement said.
Ankara had been hoping for a meeting between the president and his US counterpart on Syria on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last September, but that did not happen.
But the Turkish statement said the two leaders had agreed to meet in the US capital in November.
Within hours of this threat, the Kurdish autonomous administration in Syria, in a statement, called on the international community with all its institutions to put pressure on Turkey to prevent it from launching any attack against the Kurdish-controlled areas.
It is noteworthy that the Turkish army launched two attacks in Syria: the first in 2016 against the Islamic State, and the second in 2018 against the YPG, during which he was able to control the Afrin region (northern Syria).