Turkey evacuated 229 more citizens early Monday from Afghanistan's capital Kabul on two A400M transport aircraft of the Turkish Air Force.
Efforts to evacuate Turkish citizens from the war-torn country are underway at the Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Thousands have been scrambling to flee Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country on Aug. 15.
Turkish officials have noted that Ankara prioritizes the evacuation of its citizens from Afghanistan.
Turkey, which has 600 troops in Afghanistan, has offered to deploy troops at the Kabul airport after NATO withdraws and has held talks with the United States for weeks. Erdoğan has asked the U.S. and other allies to meet financial, logistical and diplomatic conditions.
U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the American military to withdraw from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. by Afghanistan-based Taliban-backed al-Qaida.
The Taliban declared the war in Afghanistan over after taking control of the presidential palace in Kabul, prompting Western nations to then begin scrambling to evacuate their citizens amid chaos at the airport as frantic Afghans searched for a way out.
It took the Taliban just over a week to seize control of the country after a lightning sweep that ended in Kabul as government forces, trained for years and equipped by the United States and others at a cost of billions of dollars, melted away.
