When striving to clear Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone of terrorists, as agreed by the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey at the Ankara summit last week, it is important to conduct operations in a way not to confuse local civilians with terrorists, Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey Mustafa Sentop told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2019) When striving to clear Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone of terrorists, as agreed by the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey at the Ankara summit last week, it is important to conduct operations in a way not to confuse local civilians with terrorists, Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey Mustafa Sentop told Sputnik.
"Actually, there has recently been a trilateral summit in Ankara held by Iran, Turkey and Russia, and significant progress has been made about resolution of this problem [situation in Idlib], and after the summit the leaders of these three countries have made statements. So there is a consensus about Idlib. It exists, and it is important to clean it off the terrorist organizations, terrorist elements. And Turkey is cooperating with Russia in order to do this," Sentop said.
He stressed that when targeting terrorists, it is important to be careful and not end up hitting civilians.
"And it is important to make the difference between civilians and terrorists because if any operation is launched against civilians it may cause a significant wave of migration," he added.
In 2017, Turkey, Russia and Iran mediated a ceasefire agreement between the sides to the Syrian civil conflict and have been acting as ceasefire guarantors since then. Last week, at a trilateral summit in Ankara, the three leaders issued a joint statement, in which they, among everything, confirmed their consensus on the need to completely eradicate terrorists from Idlib and create favorable repatriation conditions there for civilians.
