Ankara, Moscow plot way out of Idlib crisis

ANKARA/MOSCOW－A summit between the Turkish and Russian presidents on Thursday was being viewed as the last chance to work out a deal that avoids further calamity in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped decisions made at his meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin would ease the situation in Idlib, where Ankara is battling Moscow-backed government forces.

Speaking in front of the cameras at the start of their meeting, Erdogan said relations between Turkey and Russia were at a peak and his goal was to strengthen those ties.

Intense fighting has killed dozens of Turkish soldiers in Idlib in recent weeks, as Ankara for the first time launched a direct offensive against Syrian government forces.

Putin began the meeting by offering condolences over the killings of Turkish soldiers in Idlib.

Putin, speaking alongside Erdogan at the Kremlin, said the situation in Idlib had become so tense that it required one-on-one talks.

With a looming new migration crisis at Europe's borders, all eyes were on Moscow, where the two main players in Syria were seeing if they can hammer out another deal over Syria, tailored to their own agendas.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters that the two leaders were likely to finally agree a cease-fire, after weeks of diplomacy failed to halt the fighting between Turkey and allied Syrian rebels and Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

"Political diplomacy will be more determinant today than military diplomacy," the official said.

Erdogan upped the stakes last week, demanding Europe support his efforts in Syria and prompting a new migration crisis by opening Turkey's border with Greece to refugees and migrants.

Fistfight in parliament

Meanwhile, in the Turkish parliament, a fight broke out between lawmakers from opposing parties on Wednesday during a tense discussion about Turkey's military involvement in Syria.

Video images showed dozens of legislators from Erdogan's party and from the main opposition party pushing each other. In the video, some are seen throwing punches while others try to pull the brawling legislators apart.

Some lawmakers fell to the ground during the fray, Turkey's Haberturk television reported.

The fighting in Idlib, the last opposition-controlled region of Syria, has already been catastrophic for the population. Nearly a million people have fled their homes since Dec 1, when the latest government offensive began. With nowhere to go, many have crowded up against the border with Turkey, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees and has refused to let new ones in.

Greece said on Thursday that it had repulsed nearly 35,000 migrants trying to cross onto its territory illegally since Turkey opened its border nearly a week ago.

Battles in Idlib have also brought Turkey, a NATO member, dangerously close to war with Russia.

In the past month, Syrian and Turkish troops have repeatedly clashed on the ground and in the skies, killing scores on both sides. For Turkey, which sent thousands of troops to Syria in the past few weeks, the intervention has been disastrous: 58 Turkish troops killed in the past month, including 33 in one airstrike last week.

Outraged, Erdogan threw open Turkey's borders with Greece, declaring he would no longer hold back migrants and refugees wishing to go to Europe. Some European leaders have accused him of using refugees to blackmail the West into backing Turkey.

"The Turkish side was compelled by necessity in the hope that the pressure created as such would twist Europe's arm," said Ahmet Kasim Han, a professor of international relations at Istanbul's Altinbas University.

Erdogan and Putin have met repeatedly in the past few years to coordinate their moves in Syria. In September 2018, they struck a de-escalation deal on Idlib that averted a Syrian offensive. The agreement created a security zone free of heavy weapons and monitored by Turkish troops to halt fighting. But the deal ultimately collapsed.

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