In many nonequilibrium dynamical situations delays are crucial in inducing chaotic scenarios. In particular, a delayed feedback in an oscillator can break the regular oscillation into trains mutually uncorrelated in phase, whereby the phase jumps are localized as defects in an extended system. We show that an adaptive control procedure is effective in suppressing these defects and stabilizing the regular oscillations. Some proposals of controlling spatially extended systems, i.e., systems ruled by partial differential equations whose order parameter y is a m dimensional vector (m $ 1) in phase space, with k components (k $ 1) in real space, have been put forward for the case k 2 [4]. However, experimentally implementable tools have not yet been introduced for controlling unstable periodic patterns (UPP) in extended systems.The essential problems arising in the passage from concentrated to extended systems are already present in delayed dynamical systems, i.e., systems ruled bywhere y y͑t͒ [ ޒ m , dot denotes temporal derivative, F is a nonlinear function, and y d ϵ y͑t 2 T ͒, T being a time delay.Experimental evidence of the analogy between delayed and extended systems was provided for a CO 2 laser with delayed feedback [5] and supported by a theoretical model [6]. Most of the statistical indicators for delayed systems, such as the fractal dimensions, are extensive parameters proportional to T , which thus plays a role analogous to the size for the extended case [7].The conversion from the former to the latter case is based on a two variable time representation, defined by t s 1 uT ,where 0 # s # T is a continuous spacelike variable and u [ ގ plays the role of a discrete temporal variable [5]. By such a representation the long range interactions introduced by the delay are reinterpreted as short range interactions along the u direction, since now y d ϵ y͑s, u 2 1͒. In this framework, the formation and propagation of space-time structures, as defects and/or spatiotemporal intermittency can be identified [5,6].When T is larger than the oscillating period of the system, the behavior of a delayed system is analogous to an extended one with k 1. In particular, it may display phase defects, i.e., points where the phase suddenly changes its value and the amplitude goes to zero.In this Letter we introduce a control technique to suppress these defects, stabilizing the oscillations of a delayed system. The control restores regular patterns in two different chaotic regimes, namely, phase turbulence and amplitude turbulence, this last one implying the presence of a large number of defects. The control efficiency persists even in the presence of a large amount of noise.For the sake of exemplification, we make reference to the following delayed dynamics:Here, all quantities are real. A is an order parameter, is the time-dependent linear gain, b 1 , b 2 , m 1 , k are suitable fixed parameters, m is a measure of the ratio between the characteristic time scales for A and´, and S is a measure of the power provided to the syst...