STORY: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the deployment of ground forces against Kurdish militiamen in Syria. Erdogan made a corresponding statement on Tuesday. Turkey has been taking action against the terrorists with its planes, cannons and rifles for a few days, Erdogan said, referring to the Kurdish militia YPG. God willing, they will be exterminated with tanks and soldiers as quickly as possible. Turkey is thus expanding its military action against Kurdish organizations that it blames for the bomb attack in downtown Istanbul a week ago. At the weekend, the Turkish air force said it had bombed bases of the YPG militia and the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK in Syria and Iraq in retaliation. According to official Turkish information, Kurds then fired mortar shells at Turkey in the border area with Syria. As a result, two people were killed. Both the PKK and the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have said they had nothing to do with the Istanbul bombing.