Brett McGurk

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has denounced a senior U.S. official's visit to Kurdish-controlled northern Syria, underlining the "mistrust" the visit has created in Ankara over the nature of Turkey's "partnership" with the U.S.

"The zeitgeist dictates to us the following: While respecting the existing borders, we need to create common economic, political and cultural zones that go beyond borders, and to make the people converge in this way."

A delegation including senior U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk met members of a Kurd-Arab alliance fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) inside Syria, Kurdish sources said on Jan. 31.

The weekend visit to the war-torn country - confirmed by a U.S. official - appeared to be the first by a senior U.S. government figure inside Syrian territory.

The United States' envoy to the coalition it leads against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Brett McGurk, said Dec. 9 that its priority was to seal the last strip of border between Turkey and territory held by the ultra-hardline group in Syria.

Only 30 percent of Russian air strikes in Syria target the Islamic State group, AFP quoted an American official on Wednesday.

"The rest are against opposition forces not affiliated with the jihadists," said Brett McGurk, who is U.S. President Barack Obama's "special envoy for the international anti-IS coalition."

Syria's government said the U.S.-led military coalition had carried out a deadly air strike on a Syrian army camp, but officials from the U.S-led alliance said the report was false. 

Syria said four coalition jets killed three soldiers and wounded 13 in the eastern Deir al-Zor province on Dec. 6 evening, calling it an act of aggression, the first time it has made such an accusation. 

Turkey has pulled 350 troops back from the Turkish-Iraqi border after reaction from Baghdad over the deployment of more Turkish soldiers in Mosul. 

The troops were waiting on the border and will be sent to Iraq if Ankara and Baghdad agreed on the issue, sources told Hürriyet Daily News. 

Turkey has deployed nearly 600 troops to train Iraqi Sunni local guards in Mosul. 

The Turkish military training base near the Bashiqa district of Mosul, north of Iraq, was first established with the final aim of liberating Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). A total of 2,044 people, half of them Iraqi Kurdish fighters, have been trained there since March 2015, according to ranking official Turkish sources.

Dozens of U.S. special operations forces will arrive in Syria "very soon," as promised by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, a senior U.S. official said Nov. 22.

Turkey has ramped up its domestic security efforts against suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants with detentions and deportations at the country's largest airport, after recent deadly suicide bombings and uncovered planned attacks.