Press TV- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey is set to lay siege to the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin, where the Turkish military has been fighting Kurdish militants over the past month.
In the coming days, swiftly, we will lay siege to the center of the town of Afrin, Erdogan said on Tuesday to the lawmakers of his ruling Justice and Development Party on Tuesday.
The Turkish president said the siege will prevent militants of the Kurdish People's Protection Unites (YPG) from bargaining with the Syrian government.
Erdogan, however, said, We did not go there to burn it down, stressing that the so-called Operation Olive Branch is meant to create a safe and livable area for the Syrian refugees inside Turkey.
Turkey began the offensive on January 19 against the YPG, which controls Afrin. It associates the Kurds there with the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for autonomy on Turkish soil since 1984.
The offensive prompted local authorities to ask Damascus for help.
The plan to besiege Afrin comes amid reports that the Syrian army is set to deploy troops to the region to support the Kurds in the face of Turkeys aggression.
A senior Syrian Kurdish official said on Sunday that the regions Kurdish authorities and the Syrian government had reached a deal for the Syrian army to enter Afrin to face the Turkish military.
On Monday, Syrias state television said Damascus-backed forces would reach Afrin within hours.
Ankara has said it would confront Syrian government forces if they came to the region.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has harshly denounced the Turkish incursion as an act of aggression.
Ankara has threatened to expand the operation to the nearby city of Manbij, which is also controlled by the Kurdish militants, and beyond to the Iraqi border.
Reuters, however, reported that the Turkish military and its allies had made limited progress in more than a month that has passed since the onset of their attacks.
The agency said the allies had advanced in no more than 10 percent of Afrins area far away from Turkeys initial target of clearing out an expanse reaching as far as 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Turkish border.