Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country needed to continue its involvement in both Syria and Iraq, due to its shared frontier with both countries. “As Turkey, we can’t be off the table. We have to stay on the table. Turkey has a 911-kilometer-long border with Syria, and about 350-kilometer-long border with Iraq. None of the other countries have that. But they want to determine the outcomes there. We won’t and we can’t let that happen anymore,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan made the comments at the opening session of a new legislative year, and ahead of a vote to extend a mandate allowing the Turkish military to carry out cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq.