No Need for New Offensive in Syria’s North – Turkey’s Ambassador to Russia

Turkish Ambassador to Russia Mehmet Samsar has confirmed to Sputnik that his country sees no need to launch a new offensive in Syria’s northeast, after signing a memorandum of understanding with Moscow on stabilising the situation in that region.

“I want to say that the Ministry of National Defence announced on 23 October that there was no need to launch a new offensive in the area where “Peace Spring” was conducted. This statement was made after reaching an agreement with Russia. It is currently difficult to forecast how the joint patrolling will be conducted; this will be decided as a result of negotiations between our country’s militaries. So I would not want to say anything misleading now. We will have an understanding of how this will be done in the coming days”, Samsar said in an interview.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed a 10-point memorandum on joint actions towards settling the situation in northeastern Syria on 22 October in Sochi.

Under the deal, Russian and Syrian forces are to facilitate the withdrawal of the Kurdish troops and their weapons from the 18-mile safe zone within 150 hours, after which Russia and Turkey will jointly patrol a 6-mile deep area west and east of the border, excluding the city of Qamishli.

Tensions in the region erupted after Ankara launched an offensive, dubbed “Peace Spring” on 9 October. The operation targeted the Daesh terror organisation and the US-backed Kurdish militia, which Turkey considers a part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), banned by the country.