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Turkey Says Germany's Plan for Syria Safe Zone Is Unrealistic

Turkey Says Germany's Plan for Syria Safe Zone Is Unrealistic

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Germany’s offer to establish an internationally supervised safe zone in northeastern Syria isn’t “realistic,” casting doubt over European efforts to broker an internationally acceptable compromise in the conflict.

Following Turkey’s recent agreements with the U.S. and Russia to clear Kurdish fighters from a zone in northeastern Syria, the creation of an internationally-supervised military safe zone is no longer “realistic”, Cavusoglu said in a press conference in Ankara on Saturday with his German counterpart Heiko Maas. The comments came only days after the plan won lukewarm U.S. praise at a NATO meeting in Brussels.

Germany’s defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer first voiced the idea of an internationally supervised security zone in northeastern Syria. Kramp-Karrenbauer has said that the zone would defuse the fighting in the region and allow the focus to return to countering Islamic State terrorists.

It’s been unclear from the start how the plan would overlap with Turkey’s proposed Syrian security zone, designed to be off-limits to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. Turkey struck an agreement with Russia on Tuesday to secure a buffer zone in northern Syria.

Cavusoglu said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had proposed an idea of an internationally protected safe zone in Syria about eight or nine years ago, but the offer was then rejected by Germany and the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Asli Kandemir in Istanbul at akandemir@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Nikos Chrysoloras, Jacqueline Mackenzie

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