“If any of them poses a threat to Turkey’s security, it becomes non-binding for us”, Davutoglu told the media while in the central province of Konya province on Thursday. If it falls, tens of thousands of Syrians who have sought refuge there from fighting outside the city could flee north to the closed Turkish border, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that aid workers have described as the worst they have witnessed during five years of war.
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Shaaban clarified that Russia wants to implement this agreement and it means what it says, indicating the Syrian-Russian cooperation in counterterrorism, whose results are obvious through the deadly hits directed to the terrorists in Syria.
Throughout 2014 and 2015, US-led warplanes supported the YPG as it has pushed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) from a broad stretch along the Turkish border, consolidating islands of territory that it one day hopes to join up into a mini Kurdish state.
A spokesman for a Saudi-backed alliance of Syrian opposition and rebel factions says the group has “major concerns” that Russian Federation and the Syrian government will continue to strike at mainstream rebels under the pretext of hitting “terrorist groups” during the truce that is to go into effect later this week.
Ankara expresses pessimism over ceasefire’s viability and vows to continue targeting Kurdish YPG inside Syria.
The HNC said the “acceptance of the truce is conditional” to the Syrian government ending its siege of 18 rebel-held areas, releasing detainees and the cessation of aerial and artillery bombardment.
State news agency SANA said that military operations against the hideouts of IS fighters in Khanasser were carried out in the past 48 hours, and hailed the town’s recapture just two days after its fall to the militants.
The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a PKK splinter group, claimed responsibility for last week’s attack when a vehicle laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey’s armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and government buildings.
Davutoğlu said on Thursday that for Turkey the YPG is no different from ISIL or the al-Nusra Front.
“‘Cessation of Hostilities’ allows attacks on Nusra”.
Amnesty International this week said human rights had deteriorated sharply in Turkey’s Kurdish areas, estimating that 200,000 civilians had been affected by curfews.
Maria Zakharova is also lauding efforts by Russian Federation and the United States – the two countries that engineered the truce – to makes sure the cease-fire holds. He was quoted last week by the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet as saying they won’t resume February 25 because he can not “realistically” get the parties back to the talks by then.
The US and Turkey clearly don’t see eye to eye on the role played by the PYD and its militia, the YPG.
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Like Ankara and the European Union, the United States lists the PKK as a terrorist group. Kerry met Putin in Moscow in December, and Obama spoke with his Kremlin counterpart on Monday to agree a plan for a “cessation of hostilities” to begin in Syria from Saturday.
