Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to discuss the creation of a security zone in northeastern Syria during his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on January 23, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said Friday
ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2019) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to discuss the creation of a security zone in northeastern Syria during his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on January 23, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said Friday.
On Tuesday, Erdogan said, following a phone conversation with US President Donald Trump, that the latter had proposed creating a 30-kilometer (18-mile) buffer zone in Syria. The Turkish leader recalled that he had come with a similar initiative as far back as when Barack Obama was president, but the proposal never came to pass. According to Erdogan, the future security zone will be controlled by the country's military.
"We have previously justified the need to create a buffer zone in Syria to ensure safety of refugees, but our proposal was not accepted for a long time. We will continue negotiations with our Russian colleagues on this subject, the presidents of Russia and Turkey will discuss this matter on January 23," Aksoy told reporters.
According to the spokesman, the Kurdish-led People's Protection Units, which Ankara considers to be a terrorist organization, should not benefit from the impending withdrawal of US forces from Syria, which would entail greater freedom for the militia.
He added that the provocations of terrorists in the de-escalation zone in Syria's Idlib would not be able to hinder the implementation of the Russian-Turkish settlement agreement that established a demilitarized zone in the region.
In December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Ankara was ready to launch a military operation against Kurdish fighters on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River as well as in Syria's Manbij, located near the Turkish border, if the United States did not remove the militia from there. He later said that he had decided to postpone the start of the military operation in Syria after a phone conversation with Trump on December 14, during which the US president also revealed his plans to withdraw troops from Syria.
