© The Century FoundationTurkish Tanks
Turkish Demirören News Agency has reported that tanks have been redeployed from across Turkey towards the Hatay province located near the country's border with Syria. The tanks will reportedly later be transferred to the Turkish monitoring outposts in Syrian Idlib province, which, as Ankara claims, came under fire from the Syrian military in recent weeks.
Turkey claims that it lost several service members in similar attacks over the past weeks and boasted killing dozens of Syrian soldiers and destroying military equipment when it returned fire. Ankara accused Damascus and Moscow of violating Sochi agreements designed to create a demilitarised zone in Idlib by conducting attacks on its territory.
Moscow, in turn, slammed Ankara for escalating the situation in Idlib and also failing to fulfill obligations under the Sochi agreements, namely by separating terrorist groups from the so-called moderate opposition. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated:
"We see the reasons for the current deterioration in Turkey's chronic failure to fulfill its commitments under the Sochi memorandum and the transfer by Ankara of Turkey-controlled units of the so-called moderate armed opposition to northeastern Syria into the zone of Operation Peace Spring and to Libya."
Comment: