Türkiye’s counterterrorism efforts are, in fact, a guarantee for Syria’s unity and territorial integrity, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday, indicating that, however, the Bashar Assad regime does not acknowledge that.
“As you know, there are many terrorist organizations there. We will not allow these terrorist organizations to pose a threat to our national security,” Erdoğan told journalists on the presidential plane following his Balkan tour.
He reiterated that Türkiye could start a new counterterrorism operation “all of a sudden.”
Türkiye has backed opposition groups fighting to topple the Assad regime and cut diplomatic relations with Damascus early in the 11-year conflict.
But Russian intervention has helped Assad's regime drive the opposition back to a pocket of northwest Syria. Erdoğan said after talks in Russia earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin had suggested that Türkiye should cooperate with the Syrian regime to tackle violence along their joint border.
Erdoğan has warned that Türkiye could launch another military operation into northern Syria targeting the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group, the YPG, to extend a "safe zone" where Ankara says some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it currently hosts could return.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said last month that he had a brief talk with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in October in Serbia’s capital Belgrade.
The short encounter marks the first time the top Turkish diplomat has interacted with a Syrian official, as Türkiye has backed moderate opposition groups against the Bashar Assad regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
