Turkey and the United States will begin joint patrols in the northern Syrian Manbij area soon after training is completed within the next couple of days, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted as saying by state-owned Anadolu news agency on Wednesday. As agreed by the NATO allies in June, Turkish and US forces have been carrying out patrols in Manbij independent of each other, but have been training in preparation to carry out joint patrols. Turkey’s foreign minister said on October 17 that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Ankara could easily clear Manbij of the Kurdish YPG militia if the US “failed to do so,” Reuters reported. According to Mevlut Cavusoglu, the US accepted that the agreement with Turkey to clear Manbij of the YPG had been “delayed.”