ISTANBUL: Two artillery shells from Syria hit Turkey’s southeastern province of Hatay on Tuesday and Turkish border troops fired back, the state-run Anadolu agency said.
The shells came from an area of Syria controlled by forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar Assad, Anadolu said, adding that there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties after the shells hit a rural area of the border district of Yayladagi.
Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Assad a terrorist and said it was impossible for peace efforts in Syria to continue if he did not leave power.
Turkey has demanded the removal of Assad from power and backed opposition fighters fighting to overthrow him, but it had toned down its rhetoric since it started working with Assad’s allies Russia and Iran for a political resolution.
Turkey now says its main concerns in Syria are combating both militants and Kurdish YPG militia fighters it considers allies of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
Two shells from Syria hit southeastern Turkey
Two shells from Syria hit southeastern Turkey
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
