Turkey will not deploy its own infantry in Syria, says defense minister

Turkey will not deploy its own infantry in Syria to retake the northern city of al-Bab from jihadists but it will use Ankara-backed Syrian rebels, Defense Minister Fikri Işık said Sept. 21. 

"Our current planning is that we will conduct the operation with fighters of the Free Syrian Army [FSA]. Thus, we do not plan to join this operation with our own infantries," Işık said. 

Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield on Aug. 24, with its own troops and the FSA. It aimed to rid northern Syria, with which Turkey has a long border, of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection Unit (YPG), which Ankara says are terrorist offshoots of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkey helped liberate Syria's Jarablus and al-Rai from ISIL within the scope of this operation. 

On Sept. 19, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said al-Bab was the next target within the scope of the anti- ISIL operation that Turkey launched around one month ago.

Al-Bab lies around 30 kilometers away from the Elbeyli district of Turkey's Kilis province. 

One day later, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told CNN International's Christiane Amanpour that al-Bab and Raqqa, ISIL's self-declared capital, would be the next targets to recapture.

Işık said on Sept. 21 that Turkey would continue with the operation "until it guarantees its own security," adding that Ankara's aspiration was for the FSA and the "moderate opposition" clear out ISIL and the YPG.

A report emerged earlier in the day stating that Turkey would deploy its own combatant infantries of the Turkish Land Forces in Syria, which would accompany Turkish...