“We have agreed definitively with the international coalition that there will be no role for Turkey or the armed factions allied with it in the operation,” Talal Sello told AFP.
Turkey is coordinating with the Free Syrian Army in the Syrian border regions with Turkey west of the Euphrates. Their aim is to set up a safe zone cleared of ISIS and Kurdish forces, both of which Turkey considers terrorist organizations.
Ankara has objected strongly to the coalition’s cooperation with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the dominant force within the SDF.
But the US has maintained that the SDF is a key ally on the ground.
“We do believe they have the expertise” to capture Raqqa from ISIS, Col. John Dorrian, spokesperson for the US’ Operation Inherent Resolve military campaign against ISIS, told reporters last week.
“They were very successful in developing a plan for the liberation of Manbij,” he said. “And we believe that certainly, with coalition help, they can do the same in Raqqa.”
Brett McGurk, the US’ special envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition, said on Sunday that they were backing the SDF and that the plan was to recruit more local Arab fighters into the northern Syrian coalition.
“When it comes to Raqqa, we want a force that ultimately liberates Raqqa that is primarily from the local area, Arabs from the area. And so we have trained many of these fighters and that force will continue to grow as we get to the subsequent phases of the campaign,” he told reporters in Jordan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country is ready to help the US capture Raqqa provided the YPG are excluded from the campaign.
“We do not need terrorist organizations like the PYD and YPG in the Raqqa operation,” Erdogan told US President Barak Obama in a phone call in late October, referring to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) of northern Syria.
The SDF began on Sunday the isolation phase of the military campaign to liberate Raqqa.
