ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st February, 2020) Turkey will continue its joint patrols in Syria with the Russian military police, as agreed by the countries' presidents, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Thursday amid new tensions in Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone, also praising the bilateral dialogue on the situation in Idlib.
"As for the joint patrol, it will be conducted as it has been planned. There may be different conditions, the weather may be bad, but in general the Sochi agreement is taken as a basis, and everything outlined in it should be implemented," Akar said, as broadcast by CNN Turk.
"We have a good dialogue with the Russian side on the ground [in Idlib]," he added.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier in February that Turkey did not implement some of its key obligations for resolving the Idlib crisis, accusing it of failing to separate the armed opposition, which is ready for dialogue with the government, from terrorists. Meanwhile, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay has said that the country has fulfilled all of the undertaken commitments on Idlib.
Under the agreement, reached by Russia, Iran and Turkey in May 2017 at the talks in the Kazakh capital, four de-escalation zones have been created in Syria. While the territories of three of them are controlled by Damascus since 2018, the fourth de-escalation zone, located in Idlib and parts of neighboring provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, remains out of the government control. A large part of the de-escalation zone is seized by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terror group (formerly known as Nusra Front, banned in Russia). In September 2018, Russia and Turkey reached agreement in Sochi to create a demilitarized zone in Idlib, where over 10 militant groups operate.
