Moscow and Ankara still fail to reach agreement on Syria

Text by: Anne Andlauer

Ankara, which has deployed thousands of soldiers to Idleb, has given the Damascus regime until the end of the month to stop its bombing and withdraw from the recaptured areas. Turkey is trying to negotiate an agreement with Russia - a Russian delegation was in Ankara Wednesday and Thursday - but each side continues to camp on its positions.

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From our correspondent in Istanbul,

" Progress ", but still not in agreement. For the third time in less than three weeks, Turkish and Russian officials have sat around a table trying to find a compromise over Idleb. The Turkish Foreign Ministry, which hosted the meeting, said in a statement that it had insisted on " the need for a cease-fire as soon as possible ".

However, the negotiators have little room for maneuver. According to the pro-government daily Hürriyet , Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged the Turkish delegation not to concede "any retreat". For Ankara, it is out of the question to withdraw its troops from Idleb and to take note of the advances of the Damascus regime on the ground in recent weeks.

The Turkish president said that his ultimatum is still running: by Sunday, if the forces of the Syrian regime have not backed down, if they have not moved away from the military posts held by Turkey, the latter threatens to pass, to his turn on the offensive.

This would mean the failure of the Russian-Turkish negotiations, as much as a possible break in the personal relationship between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who had so far always managed to agree on Syria. The Kremlin has also denied holding a meeting between the two men on March 5, which the Turkish president nevertheless presented as taken for granted.

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