{"id":12760,"date":"2018-08-25T21:24:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T21:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12760"},"modified":"2018-08-25T21:24:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T21:24:24","slug":"istanbul-police-break-up-landmark-turkish-mothers-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12760","title":{"rendered":"Istanbul police break up landmark Turkish mothers’ protest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nANKARA:\u00a0Talks between Ankara and Moscow over the fate of Idlib province, the last opposition-held stronghold in Syria, have intensified over the last two weeks, with senior Turkish and Russian officials holding several critical meetings.<\/p>\n

\nTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Friday that a military assault on Idlib would be disastrous, and that clashes may last a long time.<\/p>\n

\nThe intensified diplomatic traffic between Moscow and Ankara is feeding speculation about a Russian-supported assault by the Syrian regime on Idlib in the near term.<\/p>\n

\nTurkey, which hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees, has sounded alarm bells over a potential massive influx from the province.<\/p>\n

\nAlthough the agenda of the Russian-Turkish meetings has not been made public, experts say Ankara is trying to prevent a regime assault on Idlib, and if it cannot be prevented, Turkey\u2019s objective will be to prevent the targeting of moderate opposition groups and civilians.<\/p>\n

\nIdlib is a \u201cde-escalation zone\u201d set up last year by Russia, Turkey and Iran through talks known as the Astana peace process.\u00a0 Turkey\u2019s military recently reinforced its 12 observation posts in the province with ballistic equipment and concrete walls.<\/p>\n

\nSerhat Erkmen, a military expert at the Gendarmerie and Coast Guard Academy of Turkey, told Arab News that Ankara wants to prevent a regime assault because a refugee influx would undermine host countries\u2019 territorial integrity and security.<\/p>\n

\nIf Ankara cannot prevent an assault, Turkey will try to convince Russia to distinguish between terrorist and moderate groups, he said.<\/p>\n

\nKerim Has, a lecturer on Turkish-Russian relations at Moscow State University, said Russia\u2019s position is clear: To take control of Idlib soon with the support of the Syrian Army, and with Turkey\u2019s \u201cpeaceful silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe told Arab News: \u201cTurkey can either open a corridor from Idlib to its zones of influence in Syria for the transfer of armed opposition groups that are keen on negotiations with Damascus, or organize these militants to fight and eliminate terrorist organizations there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHas said: \u201cIn both these scenarios, de facto cooperation between the Turkish and Syrian armies is expected on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe added: \u201cA new, tragic humanitarian crisis would be overcome by that corridor, possibly extending further into Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIf an assault on Idlib begins without a deal with Ankara, \u201cit would mean that Moscow\u2026 doesn\u2019t fear a severe reaction from the Turkish leadership,\u201d said Has.\u00a0 \u201cTurkey\u2019s inevitable unwillingness to disrupt ties with Russia at a time of cooling relations with the US would play into the Kremlin\u2019s hands regarding Idlib.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nMoscow may still choose to wait until late October or November for an assault, to see how US-Turkish relations evolve, Has said.<\/p>\n

\nAaron Stein, senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said although the US does not have a serious policy on Idlib, any Turkish-Russian-Iranian effort to wind down the conflict in the province will have to include outreach to Washington.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe US will try and obstruct anything that it doesn\u2019t find to be in its interests,\u201d he told Arab News.<\/p>\n

\nThe UN\u2019s Syria envoy will host Russian, Iranian and Turkish officials on Sept. 11-12 for talks on drafting a new Syrian constitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA:\u00a0Talks between Ankara and Moscow over the fate of Idlib province, the last opposition-held stronghold in Syria, have intensified over the last two weeks, with senior Turkish and Russian officials holding several critical meetings. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Friday that a military…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}