Turkish Armed Forces have begun deploying tanks and other armored vehicles from the Ankara-based 28th Mechanized Infantry Brigade to Silopi in Şırnak near the border with Iraq, on Tuesday.

“We have to be ready for any possibility,” Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Işık said on Tuesday. The deployment is designed to be ready for these developments, he stated.

Turkey will reinforce its troop deployments in the border town of Silopi amid a possible Shiite offensive to liberate Tal Afar, which has a sizeable ethnic Turkmen population and is considered a sensitive target for Ankara, Erdoğan had said.

“If al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Shiite militia] causes terror there in [Tal Afar], our response to it will be different,” Erdoğan said on Saturday.