President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday vowed to protect Turkey’s southern border with a “safe zone” in Syria after Ankara launched a barrage of air strikes against Kurdish fighters. Erdogan has long sought to build a “safe zone” with a depth of 30 kilometres (19 miles) inside Syria and repeatedly threatened this year to start a new military operation to achieve this goal. Turkey’s military has conductedthree offensives against Kurdish fighters and IS militants since 2016 and already captured territory in northern Syria, held by Ankara-backed Syrian proxies. “With the security (zone) we are e…