Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Wednesday that his military would launch its harshest retaliation yet if the Syrian government breaks a fragile truce in Idlib province brokered last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cease-fire arranged by Turkey and Russia which support opposing sides in the conflict halted a three-month air and ground campaign by the Syrian government against the rebel-held province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian-backed Syrian government offensive made significant gains in Syria\u2019s last rebel stronghold, and Turkey sent thousands of troops across the border to reinforce the rebels, leading to rare direct fighting between Syrian and Turkish troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf those across from us don\u2019t keep their promise, we will never shy away from advancing on them in a much more serious way than before,\u201d Erdogan said in his weekly address to his ruling party\u2019s legislators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Turkey\u2019s priority would be the security of its troops manning a dozen observation posts inside Idlib. Some of those posts now fall within Syrian government-controlled territory. The posts are in place as part of a previous cease-fire agreement reached in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe fought the necessary fight, and as a result signed a temporary ceasefire in Moscow. Now the issue is to transform this temporary cease-fire into a permanent one and we are swiftly pursuing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters that talks with a Russian delegation about the technicalities of the truce were progressing in a \u201cpositive and constructive\u201d manner. The delegation arrived Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current deal sets up a security corridor along Syria\u2019s M4 highway, running east-west in Idlib. Russian and Turkish troops are scheduled to begin joint patrols along the M4 on March 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Work is underway to reopen the M4, which has been closed since 2012. with workers removing barriers from the road that links Syria\u2019s coastal region with the northern city of Aleppo, the country\u2019s largest, according to opposition activists and state media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Wednesday that his military would launch its harshest retaliation yet if the Syrian government breaks a fragile truce in Idlib province brokered last week. The cease-fire arranged by Turkey and Russia which support opposing sides in the conflict halted a three-month air and ground campaign by the Syrian government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81404","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\/81404","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=81404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81406,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81404\/revisions\/81406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}