Turkey to continue Operation Euphrates Shield in Syria’s Efrin, Manbij

Speaking to his party’s lawmakers on Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of a possible Turkish army operation into the Efrin district of Syria’s Aleppo province.

“The time has come to completely destroy the separatist organization’s project aiming to create a Syrian terror corridor. We will complete the step we took during the Euphrates Shield Operation by continuing in Efrin and Eanbij,” Erdoğan said.

“We’re both targeting the terror organizations that have been set on us and asserting our claims on the field and on the table,” continued Erdogan.

"We will complete this process by securing all our borders," he added, referring to a possible Afrin operation.

Any Afrin operation would follow on Turkey’s successful seven-month Operation Euphrates Shield, which ended last March.

In the wide-ranging Euphrates Shield Operation launched in August 2016, the Free Syrian Army -- with the support of the Turkish army -- had cleared 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) of land along the Turkish-Syrian border of terrorist elements.