Turkey's president said Wednesday his country was "entering a new phase" in its goal to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) buffer zone south of the frontier.
The territory is controlled by a Syrian Kurdish administration and Ankara says it has been used to launch attacks on Turkey.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing a meeting of his party's lawmakers in Ankara, singled out the towns of Tall Rifat and Manbij as targets he said Turkey will be "clearing of terrorists."
Both lie west of the Euphrates river while the main Kurdish-controlled region is to the east.
Erdogan also remarked on the current status of Istanbul's iconic Byzantine structure, Hagia Sophia.
Hagia Sophia was originally a cathedral.
It was turned into a mosque after Istanbul's conquest by the Ottoman Empire but had been a museum for several decades, drawing millions of tourists annually.
In 2020, Turkey's president formally converted the religious landmark back into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship following a ruling by the high court that annulled a 1934 decision that had decreed the building a museum.
AP
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