Under an agreement between the U.S. and Turkey, a five-day cease-fire is en effect to allow Kurdish fighters to pull back from border areas.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants Syrian government forces to move out of areas near the Turkish border so it can resettle up to 2 million refugees there, his spokesman told the Associated Press on Saturday, adding that Erdogan will raise the issue in talks next week with Syria’s ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Syrian government troops have moved in to several locations in northeastern Syria this week, invited by Kurdish-led fighters to protect them from Turkey’s invasion. That has complicated Turkey’s plan to create a “safe zone” along the border where it wants to clear out the Kurdish fighters it considers terrorists and resettle Syrian refugees now in Turkey.
Under an agreement between the U.S. and Turkey, a cease-fire took effect Friday evening to last five days, during which Kurdish fighters are supposed to pull back from border areas. The cease-fire has been shaken by fighting in one border town, and there so far has been no sign of any withdrawals by the Kurdish-led forces.
Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said Ankara does not want Kurdish fighters to be able to continue to operate in border areas under control of Russian-backed Syrian forces. He said Syrian forces should move out of border areas because the refugees “don’t want to go back to areas under regime control.”“This is one of the topics that we will discuss with the Russians, because, again, we are not going to force any refugees to go to anywhere they don’t want to go,” he said.
Turkey has taken in about 3.6 million Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland but wants most of them to return.
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