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Turkish forces and allies will cross the Syrian border "shortly", President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's communications director said, as Turkey looks to begin a military intervention against the Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria.

Turkey has been poised to advance into northeast Syria since US troops began vacating the area on Sunday in an abrupt policy shift by US President Donald Trump that was widely criticised in Washington as a betrayal of US's allies, the Kurds, Al Jazeera reports.

"The Turkish military, together with the Free Syrian Army, will cross the Turkish-Syrian border shortly," Fahrettin Altun, President Erdogan's aide, said in a Washington Post column published on Wednesday.

"Turkey has no ambition in northeastern Syria except to neutralise a long-standing threat against Turkish citizens and to liberate the local population from the yoke of armed thugs," he wrote.

Altun added that fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) - an armed group Turkey considers a "terrorist" organisation - in Syria could either defect or Ankara would have to "stop them from disrupting" Turkey's struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS).

Turkey has said it intends to create a "safe zone" in order to return millions of refugees to Syrian soil, but the scheme has alarmed some Western allies and military analysts as much as the risks posed by the military operation itself.