Turkey renews threats against Syrian army

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is warning. Turkey will strike Bashar al-Assad's regime "everywhere" in Syria if there is another attack on its forces.

"I declare that we will strike the regime everywhere" in the event of a new attack on Turkish forces in the province of Idleb, threatened Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a speech in Ankara on Wednesday February 12

"The regime and the Russian forces (...) which support them are constantly attacking civilians, committing massacres and shedding blood," he added in a rare outing against Moscow, a key ally of the Syrian regime but who sponsors with Ankara the Astana process supposed to silence arms in Syria.

Climbing since early February

Fourteen Turkish soldiers have been killed and 45 injured since early February in regime attacks in the region of Idleb, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, where Turkey has a dozen observation posts under agreements signed with Russia.

Bombings of the Syrian regime, supported by Moscow, have intensified in recent weeks in the Idleb region, allowing Damascus to take over several sectors in the province, much to Ankara's dismay.

"The planes that hit the civilian populations in Idleb will no longer be able to carry out the actions quietly as before," asserted Recep Tayyip Erdogan, without specifying the means that would be implemented to this end or if the Russian planes would also be targeted.

Turkey, which supports rebel groups, has in recent days sent large reinforcements and armored vehicles to northwestern Syria to deploy them to new military positions.

Save the relationship with Moscow?

A press release from the Kremlin aims to be reassuring about the state of relations between Turkey and Russia. Russian, Vladimir Putin, and Turkish Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan continue to urge "full implementation" of Russian-Turkish de-escalation agreements in Syria, he said.

During a telephone conversation, the two leaders "stressed the importance of the full implementation of the Russian-Turkish agreements", said the Kremlin, referring in particular to the demilitarized zone created in the Syrian region of Idleb (northwest), where Turkish and Syrian forces have clashed violently in recent days. The statement, which said the phone call was made on the initiative of Ankara, added that the two leaders also discussed "various aspects of the settlement of the Syrian crisis".

To avoid further escalation, Ankara is increasing contacts with Moscow, the main ally of the Damascus regime with which it had concluded an agreement for a "demilitarized zone" under Russian-Turkish control in this region, which has remained a dead letter.

Since the beginning of December, violence in the neighboring provinces of Idleb and Aleppo has displaced 689,000 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

Ankara fears that the operations of the regime could provoke a new influx of refugees towards its territory.

With AFP

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