The Turkey-led military operation in Syria\u2019s Afrin region will continue until the terror corridor through Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, Tell Abyad, Ras al-Ayn, and Qamishli gets wiped out, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/strong> said Monday.<\/p>\n Erdogan’s remarks came after Turkish troops and Free Syrian Army fighters took control of Afrin town center early on Sunday.<\/p>\n Speaking at the Bestepe Culture and Congress Center in the presidential complex in capital Ankara, the president said: \u201cThe military operation will go on until the terror corridor through Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, Tell Abyad, Ras al-Ayn, Qamishli has been wiped out.\u201d<\/p>\n Moreover, he said 3,622 terrorists had been “neutralized” since the beginning of Operation Olive Branch in northwestern Syria’s Afrin.<\/p>\n Turkish authorities often use the word “neutralized” in their statements to imply the terrorists in question either surrendered or were killed or captured.<\/p>\n Erdogan said the most important stage of the Operation Olive Branch<\/strong> was completed after taking control of Afrin city center.<\/p>\n “We have eliminated most of the terror corridor in the region,” he said.<\/p>\n Erdogan also hinted at another operation against the PKK terror group in the Iraqi city of Sinjar.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can suddenly come over one night in Iraq’s Sinjar and eliminate PKK<\/strong> terrorists there,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n In mid-2014, the PKK managed to establish a foothold in Sinjar on the pretext that it was \u201cprotecting\u201d the local Ezidi community from the Daesh terrorist group.<\/p>\n Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 to clear terrorist groups from Afrin in northwestern Syria amid growing threats posed from the region.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Turkish-backed troops liberated the town of Afrin, which had been a major hideout for the PYD\/PKK since 2012.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Operation to go on until terror corridor – Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, Tell Abyad, Ras al-Ayn, Qamishli – is wiped out: President Erdogan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,1,118],"tags":[77866,3219],"class_list":["post-60351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","tag-operation-olive-branch","tag-pkk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60351","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=60351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A possible operation to Sinjar<\/h3>\n