Turkey will maintain its military presence in northern Syria "until the people are free," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed Tuesday, blasting the "so-called" parliamentary vote in the war-torn country. Turkey has launched three military incursions into northern Syria since 2016 to battle the Islamic State group and Kurdish militia deemed by Ankara as "terrorists". "We will continue to stay in this country until our thousand-year neighbour and brother, the Syrian people, reach freedom, peace and security," Erdogan claimed in a televised speech in the capital Ankara. Since the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey has militarily backed rebel groups seeking his ouster and facilitated access and movement of pro-Ankara militias into the Syrian soil. Erdogan also slammed Sunday's "so-called" legislative polls in Syria. "In these days, they are holding elections in Syria, so-called elections," he said. "Can there be such elections? Where are the countries that claim to be democratically advanced?" The election in Syria comes at a critical phase for the Damascus government, which has restored much of the territory lost at the beginning of the country's war. The millions of Syrians who fled the conflict were not eligible to vote. Erdogan also said Turkey "closely followed" the situation in another conflict-struck country Libya where Ankara backs the Government of National Accord (GNA) against rival Libyan National Army (LNA) commander Khalifa Haftar. Turkey sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three months of the year, the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general concluded in a new report. The quarterly report on counterterrorism operations in Africa by the Pentagon's internal watchdog, published Thursday, says Turkey paid and offered citizenship to thousands of mercenaries fighting alongside Tripoli-based militias against troops of east Libya-based LNA commander Khalifa Hifter. Egypt, the UAE and Russia are backing Haftar in eastern Libya, while Turkey and Qatar support the Tripoli-based GNA. Egypt's parliament on Monday unanimously approved the deployment of armed forces abroad to defend Egypt's national security, it said in a statement, amid the expansion of Libya's Turkey-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) which has moved fighters to capture the key coastal city of Sirte. In an official statement following a closed-door session, the parliament said it "unanimously approved sending elements of the Egyptian armed forces in combat missions outside the borders of the Egyptian state to defend the Egyptian national security in the western strategic front against the acts of criminal militias and foreign terrorist elements until the forces' mission ends." The decision came days after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said Egypt “will not stand idle” in the face of any attack on Sirte, which he earlier described as a “red line” for Egypt's national security and warned it could prompt military intervention by Cairo. "The Egyptian nation, throughout history, has advocated for peace, but it does not accept trespasses nor does it renounce its rights. Egypt is extremely able to defend itself, its interests, its brothers and neighbours from any peril or threat," the statement said. *This story was edited by Ahram Online.
