Tayyip Erdogan said after his talks with Vladimir Putin last week in Sochi that the Russian president suggested Turkey work with the Syrian government to address violence along the Syrian-Turkish border.
Turkey does not set conditions for a dialogue with the Syrian government and talks should focus on achieving goals, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, taking another step in softening Ankara’s stance towards the Damascus regime.
Turkey has backed rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and cut diplomatic ties with Damascus in the early stages of Syria’s 11-year war.
The Russian intervention saved the regime in Damascus and confined the rebel organizations to a pocket of northwestern Syria.
Tayyip Erdogan he said after his talks with Vladimir Putin last week in Sochi that the Russian president suggested Turkey work with the Syrian government to address violence along the Syrian-Turkish border.
The Turkish president has warned that Turkey is likely to launch a new offensive in northern Syria, against Syrian Kurdish fighters, to expand a “safe zone” where Ankara says 3.6 million Syrian refugees will be able to return. .
“There can be no condition for dialogue, outside the objectives of these contacts. The country needs to be cleared of terrorists… People must be able to return,” said Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Asked last week about the possibility of talks with Damascus, Erdogan said diplomatic relations between states can never be completely severed.
“We need to take further steps with Syria,” Erdogan said, according to a transcript of his remarks to reporters on his return flight last week from Russia.
Concern in Washington
Washington is asking “all sides to observe the ceasefire” on the border between Syria and Turkey, the State Department said on Monday, days after an increase in shelling in the region that killed at least 21 civilians, including them and children.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the recent attacks along Syria’s northern border and calls on all sides to maintain the ceasefire lines,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
“We mourn the civilian casualties in al-Bab, Hasakeh and elsewhere,” he added, stressing that the US remains committed to “ensuring the final defeat of the Islamic State and a political solution to the Syrian conflict.”
Tensions have been escalating for several weeks between the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the one hand and Turkish forces and their Syrian allies on the other.
Kurdish authorities announced Friday that a drone strike by Turkish forces hit a “girls’ education center” in the town of Smuka near Hasakeh, killing four children and injuring 11 others.
The account was confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which clarified that the children were sleeping at the time of the attack.
In al-Bab, a town controlled by Ankara-backed Syrian groups near the Syrian-Turkish border, “artillery fire by pro-regime forces against a market killed 17 civilians, including six children, and wounded 35.” , the Observatory pointed out.
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