Turkey’s foreign minister said on Wednesday Turkey and Russian Federation have prepared an agreement for a ceasefire in Syria in stepped up diplomacy by Ankara which arms and equips Syria’s main Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions.
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Turkey and Russian Federation have agreed on the wording of a draft text which will result in a Syria-wide ceasefire, Turkish state media reported on Wednesday.
The source also said if the cease-fire succeeds, political negotiations will start in the capital of Kazakhstan under Turkey and Russia’s guidance.
He also said more than 44,000 people had now been evacuated from Aleppo.
IS jihadists last week circulated a video purportedly showing two Turkish soldiers captured by the extremists in Syria being burned alive.
Erdogan had previously slammed the United States, and stated that he possessed evidence that the latter had supported IS, and Kurdish militant groups YPG and PYG.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu discussed on Wednesday the latest situation in Syria, particularly the humanitarian issues by phone.
“The evidence [mentioned by Erdogan] is quite ample, [the US] have been doing it for a number of years, including running secret Central Intelligence Agency operations through Jordan, then through Turkey and into Syria”, he said.
Earlier this month, the two countries negotiated a ceasefire in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo that led to tens of thousands of rebel fighters and civilians being evacuated from the besieged, rebel-held east.
Both conditions were unacceptable to the rebels, Mr Hijji said, and rebel negotiators were pushing to make sure the ceasefire applied to all rebel factions and across all areas.
Russian Federation has repeatedly said the groups fighting against Assad should be seen as terrorists, but, more specifically, it officially lists the al-Nusra Front, which controls part of the rebel-held province of Idlib, as a terrorist group, as well as the Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist militant organisations. Kurds have taken control over much of Syria’s north in the past five years, and Turkey is concerned that Kurdish separatists might call for an establishment of a new state.
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“They were accusing us of supporting Daesh”, he told a press conference in Ankara, using the Arabic abbreviation for IS, Aljazeera reported. “We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos”, he said, without elaborating further about the evidence.
