{"id":30396,"date":"2019-01-24T10:23:07","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T10:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30396"},"modified":"2019-01-24T10:23:07","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T10:23:07","slug":"cavusoglu-turkey-open-to-working-with-others-on-syria-safe-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30396","title":{"rendered":"Cavusoglu: Turkey open to working with others on Syria safe zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Turkey<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>has the capacity to create a “safe zone” in Syria<\/a> on its own but will not exclude the United States<\/a>, Russia<\/a> or others if they want to cooperate, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.<\/p>\n

Speaking to a local Turkish television channel on Thursday, Cavusoglu added that\u00a0Turkey\u00a0<\/span>was in indirect contact with the Syrian government, without providing details.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also said Ankara and Moscow were on the same page regarding a Syrian political solution aside from the issue of whether President Bashar al-Assad<\/a> should stay in office, commenting on a meeting<\/a> between\u00a0Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/a> and Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Erdogan said last week after a phone conversation with US President\u00a0<\/span>Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0that they had\u00a0<\/span>agreed\u00a0that\u00a0Ankara would set up a 32km security zone<\/a>\u00a0along the Turkish-Syrian border. The technical aspects of the zone were still being discussed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dispute over YPG<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Turkey is seeking the zone to contain a US-allied Kurdish militia<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>which the US has armed and trained to<\/span>\u00a0fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (<\/span>ISIL<\/a>, also known as ISIS) group.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The northeastern Syrian region along the Turkish-Syrian border is under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the anti-ISIL force spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)\u00a0considered by Ankara as a “terrorist” group.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US demand for YPG fighters’ safety has been a cause of tensions between the two NATO allies, which led to Trump threatening Ankara<\/a> with economic devastation if it hits the allied fighters.<\/p>\n

Turkey has welcomed Trump’s decision to pull out the US forces as it makes preparations for an offensive in northern Syria against the YPG.<\/p>\n

However, Trump’s decision, which confounded his own national security team, has prompted accusations at home that he is abandoning an ally.<\/p>\n

Erdogan and Trump have had several phone conversations<\/a> to discuss the US troops withdrawal from Syria as well as the proposed security zone along the Turkish-Syrian border.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey\u00a0has the capacity to create a “safe zone” in Syria on its own but will not exclude the United States, Russia or others if they want to cooperate, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. Speaking to a local Turkish television channel on Thursday, Cavusoglu added that\u00a0Turkey\u00a0was in indirect contact with the Syrian government, without providing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30396","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\/30396","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=30396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}