Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, discussed late Thursday (May 30) recent developments and violence in Syria’s northern Idlib province.
The two leaders, in a phone call, discussed agreements they signed as guarantor states to rival Syria warring parties during previous talks held in the Kazakh capital, Astana, and the Black Sea resort city, Sochi.
Discussions come in parallel as Russia, a major power backer of the Assad regime, continued to bombard with Syrian regime air forces de-escalation zones in the war-torn country’s north, where Turkey-backed armed factions are based.
In a statement, Head of the Turkish Presidential Information Office Fakhruddin Alton said Erdogan stressed to Putin the need to reinforce a ceasefire in Idlib immediately.
Erdogan also told Putin by phone that Syria needed a political solution. He also pointed out the need to prevent further casualties as a result of Syrian regime attacks against civilians south of Idlib, and remove the growing risk of a mass influx of refugees crossing into Turkey.
Syrians uprooted by the fighting protested on Friday at the Atmeh crossing into Turkey, calling for an end to the strikes and for Ankara to open the frontier.
Despite its calls to halt pro-regime bombardment of Turkey-backed rebel areas in Syria, Ankara has maintained a strict border policy against giving asylum to Syrian opposition families inside Syria. Instead, it has been deploying additional forces to its borders with Syria amid what seems to be heightened tensions threatening Turkish-Russian fallout in the embattled Levantine country.
In September last year, Erdogan and Putin announced an agreement in Sochi to establish a buffer zone separating regime forces and opposition armed factions in Idlib and its environs.
According to Turkish military sources, artillery shells landed near a Turkish observation post, located in the Jabal al-Zawiyeh area in the northern governorate of Hama, south of Idlib province. But sources said that the shelling did not result in material or human damage.
The Kremlin, for its part, blamed Turkey on Friday for failing to curb rebels it’s backing in Idlib from firing on civilian and Russian targets, signaling it would continue to back a Syrian government offensive there despite Ankara’s protests.
On that note, Ankara has moved 50 military armored vehicles and commandos to its southern Hatay province which lies on the Mediterranean coast and is bordered by Syria to the south and the east.
