Erdogan Suggested that Putin Should Leave Turkey “One on One” with Damascus

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin not to interfere in the confrontation between Turkish troops and the Syrian government army. “The Syrian issue is by no means an adventure or a desire to expand the borders. We entered Syria not at Assad’s invitation, but at the invitation of the Syrian people. And we won’t leave until the people ask us to leave. I told Putin: let us stay one-on-one with the Assad regime, we will do what is needed,” he said, speaking in Istanbul. Erdogan added that he called on Putin to “get out of Turkey’s way,” Anadolu agency reported. Erdogan also said that the number of Turkish soldiers killed in an air strike by the Syrian army in Idlib has increased to 36. “We killed more than 2100 Syrian soldiers, destroyed 300 units of military vehicles, seven chemical depots. And we will continue to destroy them,” the Turkish president added. The situation in Idlib escalated after the February 27 when terrorists of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a large-scale attack on the positions of the Syrian army. Government forces returned fire. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, along with the militants, the Turkish soldiers, who should not have been there at all, also came under fire. As a result, more than 30 Turkish soldiers died, several dozen more were injured. At the same time, the Russian side took measures for a complete ceasefire on the Syrian side and ensured the evacuation of the dead and wounded to Turkey. In late January, the Syrian army launched an offensive in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, where terrorists bombarded residential areas daily. At the same time, Ankara and some of its partners accused Damascus and Moscow of striking humanitarian targets and the Turkish military. Russia and Syria have repeatedly stated that instability was the result of terrorist actions. The Russian Foreign Ministry called one of the main reasons for the degradation of the situation in Idlib the failure to comply with the Russian-Turkish memorandum of September 17, 2018. According to this document, the Turkish military could be present in the Idlib de-escalation zone, but subject to the withdrawal of all radical terrorist groups from there. As noted by the head of the foreign ministry, Sergey Lavrov, Turkey was unable to fulfill its key obligations, in particular, it did not dissociate the armed opposition, which was ready for dialogue with the government, from terrorists.