Turkey, Russia, Iran to hold talks on Syria amid military campaign

Source
China Daily
Editor
Huang Panyue
Time
2018-03-27 08:51:10

ANKARA - The presidents of Turkey, Russia and Iran will meet in a trilateral summit on Syria in Istanbul early next month.

The meeting, scheduled for April 4, comes after the capture by Turkish-led forces of a Kurdish stronghold in northern Syria and amid Turkish threats to extend the massive operation further east.

The summit will be hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and will be the second such meeting following the previous one last November in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The talks will be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani as the three leaders seek to salvage their efforts to end the seven-year Syrian conflict.

As part of peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana sponsored by Ankara, Moscow and Teheran, the three countries' foreign ministers met on Friday and discussed preparations for next month's summit, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The three countries have worked together despite their different positions. While Iran and Russia have provided military support to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey has repeatedly called for his ousting and supported rebel groups.

Experts believe that the mere fact regional actors are gathering should be considered in a positive light.

Kerim Has, a lecturer at Moscow State University and a specialist on foreign relations and Russia, said that "such a message despite the Afrin operation would be important for the three (regional) players".

He was referring to the offensive launched by Ankara against Kurdish fighters in the northern Syrian enclave of Afrin, which was captured last week.

Erdogan has vowed to expand the offensive to other Kurdish-held regions further east, sparking fears of a possible clash with US troops deployed in the area.

As part of the Astana process, Turkey, Iran and Russia have set out to create four so-called de-escalation zones in Idlib, the greater Damascus area, the southern region of Daraa and the city of Homs.

But intense bombardment in recent weeks in eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave near Damascus, designated in May 2017 as a "de-escalation zone", has left hundreds of civilians dead, according to independent sources, and led to thousands of people being evacuated from the area.

"The deplorable situation in eastern Ghouta will be on the table" in Istanbul, said a Turkish diplomatic source on condition of anonymity.

Some analysts said that by giving a green light to Turkish airplanes to use the space it controls over Syria, Russia has meddled in the Turkish-US dispute to weaken the NATO alliance.

"The green light given to Operation Olive Branch shows that even though they are reluctant, Russia and Iran prefer Turkey, who would transfer in the end the control of Afrin to government forces rather to an independently maneuvering YPG (the acronym for the Kurdish People's Protection Units), who would be unpredictable," said Has.

 

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