Syria: Ankara threatens to strike jihadists in Idleb

Soldiers of the Turkish army in the town of Binnish, in the northwest of the province of Idleb, on February 12, 2020. Muhammad HAJ KADOUR / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

Turkey announced this Thursday, February 13, the dispatch of new troops to this city in northwestern Syria. It threatens for the first time to strike the jihadists there if they do not respect a cease-fire supposed to end the fighting in the rebel province.

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With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer

Turkish military deployment to Idleb will therefore continue and it is no longer just a question, as Ankara has been saying for days, of preventing the forces of Bashar al-Assad's regime from advancing in this province, or of pushing them back to the beyond the borders of the Sochi agreement concluded with Moscow in 2018.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar went further: " Force will be used against those who do not respect the cease-fire, including radicals. "

" Radicals ": an understatement to designate the jihadists of the Hayat Tahrir al-Cham group, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, who have also always been excluded from ceasefire agreements. However, under the Sochi compromise, Turkey undertook to evacuate the jihadists from Idleb. Until now, she had never been able or wanted to do it.

counterpart

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that his country would take action against Hayat Tahrir al-Cham. " From now on, we will no longer close our eyes to [...] fanaticism, betrayal, provocations [...] of snipers in opposition groups who offer the regime a pretext for its attacks ", had -he announces.

This change of discourse is certainly a counterpart that Turkey offers to Russia to convince it to find a lasting agreement in Idleb.

The day before, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had promised to attack the forces of the Syrian regime in the event of an attack on Turkish soldiers, Russia - the regime's main ally - had accused Ankara of doing nothing to " neutralize " the terrorists in Idleb ".

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  • Turkey
  • Syria
  • Terrorism

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