President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Monday Turkey is now preparing for new anti-terror operations elsewhere in the region against terrorist groups after it has completed the first stage of Operation Euphrates Shield.
Addressing the crowd in Trabzon during an opening ceremony, Turkey is planning to conduct launch new anti-terror operations in different regions near the border to drive terrorist groups PKK, the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Daesh.
"Turkey has nice surprises for the terrorist groups in the upcoming months. We will turn the spring into a dark winter for the terrorists," Erdoğan said.
Ankara declared on March 29 that Operation Euphrates Shield, which was launched on Aug. 24 to secure Turkey's southern border, has "successfully come to an end."
The officials announced that more than 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of land in northern Syria was liberated from Daesh, more than 2,500 terrorists were killed and that some 100,000 people living in the Gaziantep province are now expected to return to the liberated areas.
Since the initial goals of the operation were to drive Daesh away from the border, which was captured by the terror group after clashes with Syrian opposition groups in 2013, and to prevent the creation of a terror-corridor by PKK-linked groups in northern Syria, Turkey got its way and reached its primary aims.
In the end, the results are reflected in the statistics. Daesh terror attacks in Turkey, which had increased between July 2015 and August 2016 causing the deaths of nearly 300 people, drastically decreased after the operation was launched on Aug. 24, 2016. After that date, Daesh has only been able to carry out one terror attack inside Turkish borders.
