Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated a proposition for Turkey and Syria to revive a 25-year-old agreement that in the past allowed deployment of Turkish troops in Syrian soil to combat Kurdish fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated a “terrorist group” by Ankara.
The 1998 Adana accord had allowed Turkish forces to chase Kurdish fighters 5 km into Syria in case the Syrian government failed to effectively block the activities of the PKK.
Lavrov earlier in October 2019 said that Syrian and Turkish military forces should work out how to cooperate in northern Syria in the context of the Adana accord.
Speaking on Friday at a meeting in Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he reiterated that proposal, saying:
“This agreement assumed that there was a terrorist threat and that in order to counter this threat, Turkey would have the right, in agreement with Damascus, to send its anti-terrorism units up to a certain perimeter inside Syrian territory. This agreement is still in force, no one has denounced it.”
He added:
“It is the United States that decisively fuels the separatism of radical Kurdish organizations, which the Turks call a threat to their security, so these processes are connected.”
Turkish authorities claim that Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria have links to the PKK and pose a security threat to Turkey.
Source: Gerçek News
