In a video shared by Cenk Tosun on his Twitter account, Turkish soldiers purportedly in Afrin can be seen taking turns saying hello to the Turkish football star.<\/p>\n
Tosun then replied with a video of his own. In the video, Tosun says: “Salute to our brother soldiers in Afrin. I received your video message. I am very much touched. Our hearts beat with you. Our homeland is entrusted to you. Godspeed you!”<\/p>\n
Tosun was transferred to English Premier League side Everton from Istanbul’s Besiktas in January.<\/p>\n
Turkey on Jan. 20 launched Operation Olive Branch to remove PYD\/PKK and Daesh terrorists from Afrin.<\/p>\n
According to the Turkish General Staff, the operation aims to establish security and stability along Turkey’s borders and the region as well as protect Syrians from terrorist cruelty and oppression.<\/p>\n
The operation is being carried out under the framework of Turkey\u2019s rights based on international law, UN Security Council resolutions, its self-defense rights under the UN charter, and respect for Syria’s territorial integrity, it said.<\/p>\n
The military has also said that only terrorist targets are being destroyed and “utmost care” is being taken to avoid harming any civilians.<\/p>\n
Afrin has been a major hideout for the PYD\/PKK since July 2012, when the Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without a fight.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkish striker Cenk Tosun, who plays for English club Everton, shared a message via Twitter in which he voiced his support for Turkish soldiers in Afrin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,80,127],"tags":[77861,1700,75669,24387,9002,6046],"class_list":["post-60305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-breaking-news","category-sport","tag-afrin","tag-besiktas","tag-cenk-tosun","tag-everton","tag-syria","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78414,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60305\/revisions\/78414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}