BEIRUT: Syrian opposition figures were en route to the Kazakh capital on Wednesday for fresh talks on reinforcing a faltering six-week truce, a spokesman and other opposition officials told AFP.
The talks are set to begin on Thursday and, like an earlier round in January, will be sponsored by rebel backer Turkey and regime allies Russia and Iran.
“We are going now to Astana as the official opposition delegation,” spokesman Yehya Al-Aridi told AFP by phone.
Rebel figures will meet with representatives from Russia, Turkey, and the UN, he said.
The team will be again headed by Mohammad Alloush, a leading figure of Jaish Al-Islam, but would be “smaller” than the last round.
“We are going there for one particular thing, an essential matter: We were promised that there is going to be affirmation of the cease-fire,” Aridi said.
A truce deal brokered by Moscow and Ankara in December is faltering across Syria, with clashes reported in the southern city of Daraa and bombardment in the provinces of Aleppo and Hama.
The Istanbul-based National Coalition on Wednesday said these violations would make up a cornerstone of the Astana talks.
National Coalition spokesman Ahmad Ramadan said the delegation will include Alloush and five other opposition figures.
“The point of the delegation is... to send a message to the Russians regarding the lack of commitment to the Ankara (truce) agreement, six weeks after it was signed,” Ramadan told AFP.
He said violations included “aerial and artillery bombardment, forced displacement, the lack of a solution for detainees and the continued besiegement of 800,000 civilians.”
Alloush was also expected to insist that political matters — like a transition of power — be discussed only in upcoming UN-brokered talks in Geneva.
Russia is sending presidential envoy Alexander Lavrentiev to Astana while Iran said it is dispatching deputy foreign minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari.
Syrian state media reported Wednesday that a government delegation had arrived in Kazakhstan.
UN envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura said he would not participate personally in Thursday’s meeting but that his office would be represented by a “technical team.”
The Astana initiative has left the West on the sidelines of the latest push to end the war in Syria that has claimed more than 310,000 lives since 2011.
Syria opposition delegates head to Astana talks
Syria opposition delegates head to Astana talks
’We can’t make ends meet’: civil servants protest in Ankara
- Some 800 civil servants from the Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions joined a march to the labor ministry
- “The increase in rents is almost three times higher than the pay rise we received,” Kocak told demonstrators
ANKARA: Hundreds of angry civil servants marched through Ankara Wednesday demanding a realistic pay rise as they battle poverty amid the soaring prices and double-digit inflation.
Some 800 civil servants from the Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions (KESK) joined a march to the labor ministry in the Turkish capital, carrying banners demanding an immediate pay rise.
“The increase in rents is almost three times higher than the pay rise we received, meaning our salaries are not even enough to cover the rent increases alone,” Ayfer Kocak, KESK’s co-chair, told demonstrators outside the ministry.
“We are experiencing growing poverty and insecurity.”
Turkiye’s annual inflation rate fell to 30.89 percent in December from 44.38 percent a year earlier, official figures showed, but independent economists and unions say real numbers remain much higher.
According to December figures released by the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (TURK-IS), the absolute minimum needed to feed a family of four was just over 30,000 liras ($690).
At the same time, Turkiye’s poverty threshold — the sum required to cover the basic needs for a family of that size — had risen to 98,000 liras ($2,270), it said.
Food inflation approached 43 percent annually, it added.
- ‘We can’t make ends meet’ -
“The government is condemning civil servants to live in degrading conditions by relying on misleading data” from the official statistics agency TUIK, Tulay Yildirim, head of a local teachers’ union branch, told AFP.
“We workers’ voices to be heard, saying we can no longer make ends meet and want to receive our fair share of a budget created through taxes paid by all citizens,” she added.
Earlier this month, public sector wages were hiked by 18.6 percent for the next six months, an increase unions said was insufficient.
“There are not only workers here, but also pensioners. The salary increase granted falls below the poverty line,” said Osman Seheri, head of a local branch of the municipal workers’ union.
“We cannot even afford proper clothes to go to work, let alone a suit and tie. With such wages, it is impossible to live in a major city.”
According to the independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG), which challenges the official data, annual inflation in Turkiye reached 56.14 percent in December 2025, with prices rising 2.11 percent in December alone.
