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Why is Turkey so focused on Syria's al-Bab?

From a military point of view, al-Bab is a strategically unimportant town in the Syrian conflict, but that hasn't stopped Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from obsessing over the town's liberation from the Islamic State.
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Al-Bab means “gate” in Arabic. It is also a name for a relatively small town in Aleppo province. Al-Bab is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Aleppo, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the Turkish border, and it had a population of 63,069 in 2004 who were mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs.

From the military point of view, this strategically unimportant town has become the location where the Turkish army has suffered heavy casualties. The casualties inflicted upon the Turkish Armed Forces has surpassed those of the Americans and Russians, who had militarily engaged much earlier than Turkey and in a much wider zone.

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