Turkey and Russia have no disagreements over Ankara\u2019s air and ground offensive into northern Syria\u2019s Afrin region and the two countries are in close contact over the operation, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Turkey launched \u201cOperation Olive Branch\u201d two weeks ago targeting the YPG Kurdish militia in Afrin, opening a new front in Syria\u2019s seven-year-old, multi-sided civil war. Russia is the main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not have any disagreements with Russia. We continue our contacts with Russia,\u201d Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with TGRT Haber, when asked about possible tensions with Moscow over Afrin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to inform each other in a timely manner, especially (regarding) air strikes and the developments in the field. We contact them in real time or in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said Turkish forces had finished building a sixth observation point in Syria\u2019s Idlib region.<\/p>\n
Under a deal reached with Tehran and Moscow to try to reduce fighting between pro-government forces and mainly Islamist insurgents in northwestern Syria, Turkey has agreed to set up 12 observation posts in Idlib and neighbouring provinces.<\/p>\n
But the \u201cde-escalation\u201d in violence they were supposed to monitor has halted. In December the Syrian army, helped by Iran-backed militias and heavy Russian air power, launched a major offensive to take territory in Idlib province.<\/p>\n
Idlib is one of the last main strongholds of anti-Assad rebels who have been driven from most of their bastions in Syria since Russia joined the war on the side of the Damascus government in 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey and Russia have no disagreements over Ankara\u2019s air and ground offensive into northern Syria\u2019s Afrin region and the two countries are in close contact over the operation, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday. Turkey launched \u201cOperation Olive Branch\u201d two weeks ago targeting the YPG Kurdish militia in Afrin, opening a new front in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21148,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146\/revisions\/21148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}