A Turkish army reconnaissance team scouted out Syria's Idlib province on Sunday, a senior militant in Syria said, before an expected military operation, Reuters reported.
Any incursion could bring them into conflict with powerful jihadists from al-Qaida-linked militants, although there were signs on Sunday that they were working to avoid a confrontation, the report said. Local sources told Reuters the Turkish military vehicles were escorted into Idlib by a convoy of militants from the group, which has joined a jihadist alliance called Tahrir al-Sham.
The reports say Turkish forces were escorted by al-Qaida-linked militants to Darat al-Ezzah area, which is only miles from Afrin, a Kurdish dominated enclave in western Syria.
There was no immediate Turkish comment on the reports. It was not immediately clear why or how there was an escort by al-Qaida-linked militants.
"We will never allow a terror corridor that begins in Afrin and goes to the Mediterranean," Erdoğan said, referring to the stretch of Turkey's southern border which is controlled on the Syrian side by Kurdish fighters and Tahrir al-Sham. Turkey has been one of the biggest supporters of terrorist fighting Syrian forces during the six-and-a-half-year war.
Tahrir al-Sham, spearheaded by the "former" Nusra Front, which was al Qaeda's Syrian branch until last year when it changed its name, has been a military force since early in the conflict.
Since early this year it has battled other jihadist groups as it tried to gain control over areas including Idlib.
A local resident and another local militant told Reuters they had seen Turkish military vehicles enter Idlib and then travel under Tahrir al-Sham escort along a road.
The senior said the reconnaissance team went to Sheikh Barakat, a location that overlooks both jihadist-held areas of Aleppo province, adjacent to Idlib, and the Kurdish-controlled area of Afrin, the report said.
Mortars were fired from the area under YPG control near to the location where the Turkish reconnaissance team was operating, the senior militant told Reuters.
"The Turkish team is on its way back. Its mission has been accomplished. They visited areas of disengagement and locations where the Turkish army would be positioned," the militant said.
Reuters witnesses, local people, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor, said earlier on Sunday the Turkish military and Tahrir al-Sham had clashed near the village of Kafr Lusin in Idlib.
Tahrir al-Sham began the exchange by firing on a Turkish bulldozer removing sections of a border wall and Turkish artillery returned fire, they said. The area was later quiet.
