![\"Map](\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/3F33\/production\/_92097161_syriahaasalbabdabiqraqqa6241016.png\")
<\/p>\nTurkey says it has “successfully” ended its seven-month Euphrates Shield military campaign in northern Syria.<\/p>\n
But Prime Minister Binali Yildirim did not rule out new military operations and did not say whether Turkish troops would now leave Syria.<\/p>\n
Turkey launched the offensive last August to push Islamic State militants away from its border and also to stop the advance of local Kurdish fighters.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to visit Turkey.<\/p>\n
“Operation Euphrates Shield has been successful and is finished. Any operation following this one will have a different name,” Mr Yildirim said after Wednesday’s meeting of the country’s security council.<\/p>\n
On 24 August, Turkish troops, tanks and planes crossed the border in what Ankara said was the operation to push back IS militants from a 100km (60 miles) stretch of the border.<\/p>\n
The army and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have captured several towns, including Jarablus, finally moving south to the strategic town of Al-Bab.<\/p>\n
The Turkish operation was also aimed at preventing Kurdish YPG militias from crossing the Euphrates River westwards and linking up with mainly Kurdish areas there.<\/p>\n
Ankara is concerned that Syrian Kurds will try to establish self-ruling territories similar to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.<\/p>\n
It considers YPG units to be the Syrian extension of the Kurdish PKK group, which has been fighting an insurgency in south-eastern Turkey for decades.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Later on Thursday, Mr Tillerson will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials in Ankara.<\/p>\n
His visit comes as bilateral relations have plummeted in the past 18 months, the BBC’s Mark Lowen in Turkey reports.<\/p>\n
Disagreements are growing, principally over who should be involved in retaking the Syrian stronghold of Raqqa from IS.<\/p>\n
Turkey wants the US to drop its alliance with Kurdish fighters, but Washington says they are the most effective force, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n
The Turkish government is also expected to push Mr Tillerson on its extradition request for Fethullah Gulen, the cleric living in Pennsylvania whom Ankara blames for last year’s attempted coup.<\/p>\n
The US insists it remains a judicial, rather than political decision.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey says it has “successfully” ended its seven-month Euphrates Shield military campaign in northern Syria. But Prime Minister Binali Yildirim did not rule out new military operations and did not say whether Turkish troops would now leave Syria. Turkey launched the offensive last August to push Islamic State militants away from its border and also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[5691,5692,5693],"yoast_head":"\n