Turkey’s next target after al-Bab’s liberation is the Syrian town of Manbij, and it is crucial to clear PKK’s Syrian-offshoot Democratic Union Party (PYD) from the area, President RecepTayyip Erdoğan said on Friday. In an interview with Saudi news channel Al Arabiya, Erdoğan said that PKK’s Syrian-offshoot People’s Protection Units (YPG) and PYD, which are still in Manbij, need to be cleared as soon as possible because the area is demographically dominated by Arabs. “We’ve told the Obama administration before that Manbij needs to be handed over to the Arabs and they told us that the PYD/YPG was leaving, but unfortunately they never left” Erdoğan said and added that after Manbij, Raqqa is the only Daesh stronghold in Syria.
