ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan backpedaled on a statement Tuesday, in which he claimed that Ankara’s Euphrates Shield operation in Syria aims to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. “The aim of the Euphrates Shield operation is not any country or person but only terror organizations,” Erdogan claimed on Thursday, according to Hurriyet news. “No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over, and no one should comment on it in another fashion or try to derail it,” he added. This is a retraction of his previous claim on Tuesday, when he claimed that Euphrates Shield also had the goal of toppling the Assad regime. “We entered there (Syria) to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror,” Erdogan had stated. This prompted the Kremlin to seek a clarification for Erdogan’s statement. Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday the Kremlin said it was satisfied with Erdogan’s clarification. Also on Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that neither Russia nor Syria were responsible for an alleged airstrike last Thursday, which killed four Turkish soldiers in Syria. Since launching its campaign in Syria on August 24 Turkey has been fighting ISIS and Kurdish forces near its border.
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