Celebrities visit border town to boost troop morale

A group of Turkish celebrities yesterday visited Turkey's southern Hatay province, along the border with Syria, to boost the morale of the troops engaged in Operation Olive Branch on Syria's northwestern Afrin province to clear the area of the PKK terrorist organization's Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG).

The celebrities, including singers and actors, visited the soldiers, as well as the school of Fatma Avlar, 17, the civilian victim of the YPG attack in Hatay's Reyhanlı district, who had lost her life after a YPG rocket fired from Afrin landed on her house on Jan. 31, and laid carnations on her desk in her class.

The group of celebrities, Yavuz Bingöl, Tamer Karadağlı, Erhan Yazıcıoğlu, Erhan Güleryüz, Mustafa Ceceli, Zuhal Yalçın and Sefa Sezgin, were accompanied by Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Deputy Chairman Harun Karacan in the program titled, "Artists and Mehmetçik [name given to Turkish troops] hand in hand."

During the visit, actress Zuhal Yalçın wished success to the troops in their duty and said: "We are at peace in our homes thanks to you. May God increase your strength."

Locals in the Reyhanlı district were also pleased with the celebrities' voluntary visit.

After the launch of Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20, YPG terrorists fired nearly 100 rockets into civilian areas in Turkey's border towns of Hatay and Kilis, in which seven civilians have lost their lives and more than a hundred have been injured.