Page 5 - Turkish Incursion News Today

Would be happy to take your questions. thank you. reporting that mr. secretary, you said that the u.s. has not abandoned the fdf. can you tell us whether or not ongoing operations against isis has paused or slowed, or is the u.s. partnering with them continuing to do that in other areas? and mr. chairman, can you give us an assessment of the ongoing incursion by turkey into syria? have turkish ground troops gone in in any large numbers? is there any pushback or fighting back of any substance by ...

Spoke to all of our counterparts and urge them to stop this incursion. to highlight the importance of doing so, because of the destabilizing effects of having throughout the region. the dramatic harm i feel is being done to our bilateral relationship. ive also had a similar conversation with the nato secretary general, updated him on the situation. i think you have seen that many of our nato allies have come out and said the same, that turkey must stop this incursion now. that remains our messag...

Deputy attorney general. when you look at our agreement with nato, its pretty clear. so weve entered that agreement with turkey. the kurds are our regional allies, but they are not part of that agreement. saudi arabia, we are in an agreement with. so those are -- >> marie: not -- >> harris: or not? >> matt: member with the president was faced with. he could have left those hundreds of troops on that border with our allies, in those containing -- the kurds. turkey has had to work coming over. he ...

>> in my conversations with -- again, as of yesterday, with the minister car, i have no indicatio that they are willing to stop. im not surprised, because since i came into office in late july, and ive had multiple engagements, this is been there a consistent theme about the terrorist threat that they see , et cetera. how this is affecting international security, et cetera, et cetera. theyve been adamant about making this incursion and have been dissatisfied with the progress weve made, so see n...

From tanks on the northern side of the border. as far as forces that have come south, to our knowledge its been relatively limited in terms of ground forces. we are talking about those two villages east and west of what is called the security mechanism zone. they have come south on both sides with some turkish military light infantry, commander forces, they call them. in coronation with the free syrian army. you look at the numbers of turkish military and the hundreds, maybe up to perhaps a thou...

As you know, the entire frontage of the turkish syrian border is about 440 or so kilometers. the area of the incursion, the turkish incursion, is about 125 kilometers. its on the west, a village, and another on the east. and thats where the two oh people or us were. we withdrew forces throughout all of syria. we remain colocated with them. the sdf is still guarding prisons in the area that have been detained over time. so we are still conducting operations. obviously, this incursion that was ini...

>> it is not the case. what we saw in the iraq war was we were able to defeat them, and they could come back in another form, and they could go to this turkish incursion leaving isis free to regenerate this this is a terrible policy, and it is broiling the region in more violence as we just heard from the people on the ground. >> i am trying to figure out if this is intentional. it would not have taken anybody with your level of experience to understand what was going to happen. or this was bund...

Are feeling quite betrayed by the departure of u.s. forces. >> never say never, but it would be really difficult now for the trump administration to reverse course and try to fore stall this turkish incursion. theyve created civilian casualties. theyve already damaged and destroyed parts of two different cities along that border. and we dont have the capacity right now to stop that. not to mention our syrian democratic forces just in the last hour or so announced that they were suspending all op...

A comeback in several isolated pockets throughout the region. what we could see is some of these is lattic state fighters -- theres about 12,000 hold up in prison. and 48,000 family members, men, women and children in detention camps throughout northern syrian, if these syrian democratic forces are distracted, if they walk away from guarding these people to fight the turkish incursion, they could let them go. then theyd be able to reform the caliphate that was defeated in march. this region has ...

The national security interest. if you believe isis is still a threat to american interests and our allies and partners and which it is and the military and intelligence community say that then you have to sustain the victory over them. youve destroyed them on the ground but not as a network. that is what the small groups were doing in syria to defeat the network and create a sustainable set of conditions and letting turkey if will make it harder for our sdf allies to fight isis because theyre g...