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Turkey will not hand over al-Bab to Syrian regime
[Hurriyet Daily News] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
will not hand over control of al-Bab to the Bashir al-Assad regime after it clears the town of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) jihadists, Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmus has stated.

"Al-Bab belongs to the people of Al -Bab," Kurtulmus told state-run Anadolu Agency, stressing that local people must be in charge of running the town, as in Jarablus.

He denied claims that Turkey will conduct its military offensive on al-Bab and then leave it in the hands of regime forces.

"The Euphrates Shield Operation to al-Bab is not an operation that aims to clear the area and then hand it over to the regime," Kurtulmus said, adding that the offensive is about "Turkey’s national security."

"It is an operation to protect the borders of Turkey and to immediately eliminate the threats to Turkey south of the border," he said.

The deputy prime minister recalled mortar shells fired by ISIS into the southern Turkish province of Kilis and noted that YPG elements, which Turkey sees as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were leaking into Turkey through the border.

"The main purpose of this operation is to clear the cities there and to hand over those cities to the local people. Jarablus is a successful example of that," he noted, also reiterating that the anti-ISIS coalition forces have failed to support Turkey’s Euphrates Shield Operation.

"The problem is not only about al-Bab. From the very beginning the B.O. regime has not had a plan for resolving the Syrian crisis," Kurtulmus said, while expressing hope that the new Trump administration in Washington will make efforts in favor of the people of the region.

It has been speculated that the Russia and Turkey have been discussing the possibility of a Syrian regime offensive into al-Bab, which Turkish army-backed forces have been besieging for weeks against stubborn ISIS resistance.

More than 40 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the offensive on al-Bab, where Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
(FSA) fighters backed by the Turkish army have reached the town’s western and northern outskirts.

Posted by: Fred 2017-01-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=479486