Turkish Mission Sent to Russia in Bid to Ease Syrian War Rift
Turkey Sends Mission to Russia in Latest Bid to Ease Syrian Rift
(Bloomberg) -- A delegation of Turkish military, intelligence and diplomatic officials will hold a second day of talks in Russia on Tuesday to seek a way out of an escalating crisis in northwestern Syria that’s testing ties between Ankara and Moscow.
Turkey wants an end to intensifying attacks by Russian-backed Syrian forces on the country’s last rebel stronghold of Idlib, where onetime al-Qaeda militants as well as Turkey-backed rebels are holed up. Russia has in turn accused Turkey of failing to abide by agreements to ease hostilities, warning that the flow of Turkish troops was aggravating the situation.
The Turkish officials, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal, and their Russian counterparts assessed the latest situation in Idlib, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said.
“Our delegation stressed the need to speedily deescalate tensions in the field and prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian situation,” the ministry said in a statement. “The full implementation of agreements reached under Sochi and measures against violations have been discussed.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad aims to take Idlib to help reconnect Aleppo, once the nation’s commercial center, to the capital, Damascus. Assad’s forces on Monday captured dozens of towns and villages near Aleppo, vowing to eliminate remaining “terrorist organizations wherever they are across Syria,” state-run Sana news agency reported.
Despite backing opposite sides in the Syrian civil war, Turkey and Russia have deepened ties in defense and trade. But growing discord in Idlib, where the two powers acted as guarantors of a fragile truce, has cast a shadow over the relations.
Under orders from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has massed troops along the border. It’s threatened to use force before the end of February if Syrian fighters, who killed 14 Turks earlier this month, don’t pull back from areas surrounding Turkish military outposts in Idlib.
It may be necessary to agree on a new version of the troubled 2018 agreement between Russia and Turkey reached in Sochi to de-escalate the situation in the northwestern province, said Vitaly Naumkin, who advises Russia’s government on the Middle East.
“Syria has the right to re-establish control over its territory, it’s a matter of sovereignty,” Naumkin told reporters on the sidelines of a Valdai discussion club conference in Moscow on Monday. “But the problem can be resolved.”
Erdogan has said Syrian forces must end their indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The worry is that the violence could trigger another exodus of people fleeing the fighting toward Turkey, which already shelters the world’s largest number of Syrian refugees.
Turkey’s state-run TRT television channel showed a stream of trucks carrying displaced people and their belongings toward the Turkish border on Monday.
--With assistance from Firat Kozok.
To contact the reporters on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net;Henry Meyer in Munich at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Amy Teibel
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