Two key towns for Turkey in Syria

As the Turkish, U.S. and French defense ministers were meeting in Brussels on Oct. 26 for an assessment on the situation in Mosul and Iraq in general, Ankara was focused on helping the Free Syria Army (FSA) take control in towns that are key for its border security.
President Tayyip Erdoğan said on the same day in Ankara that Turkey was determined to clear Manbij from the forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the Syria extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a major threat for Turkey with its acts of terror. Manbij was taken from the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) earlier this year by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which mainly consists of the People's Protection Units (YPG) of the PYD, with heavy air and special forces support from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). In a telephone conversation in May between Erdoğan and U.S. President Barack Obama, Turkey agreed to turn a blind eye to the U.S.'s supply of arms to the PYD in return for a promise that the PYD forces would later leave Manbij and retreat to the east of the Euphrates river. The aim was to prevent the PYD - which means the PKK for Turkey - from forming a zone of control along Turkey's 910-km border with Syria.

When the Turkish government was sure that the Americans could not or would not take the PYD out of Manbij, despite numerous demands from Ankara, and after a deadly ISIL attack in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep, Turkish forces entered Syria in support of the FSA. They took the border town of Jarablus from ISIL on the first day of the operation, Aug. 24, shortly before Turkey-supported Syrian opposition forces took the small, psychologically important town of Dabiq from ISIL. They ultimately secured control over an...