(Istanbul) “A land military operation in Syria is possible at any time,” said Ibrahim Kalin, close adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday.
“We continue to support the political process” initiated at the end of December by the meeting between the Turkish and Syrian Ministers of Defense in Moscow, he assured.
“But a ground operation remains possible at any time, depending on the level of threats received,” Mr. Kalin insisted to journalists from several foreign media, including AFP.
He announced a possible new meeting of the Ministers of Defense of the two countries before that, scheduled for mid-February, of the Turkish and Syrian Ministers of Foreign Affairs.
“We want security at our borders,” he justified, arguing the presence of Kurdish forces in Syrian territory.
“We never aim for [intérêts] of the Syrian state or Syrian civilians,” he said.
But the security guarantees promised by Russia and the United States after the last Turkish offensive in Syria in 2019 “have not been kept” and the Kurdish fighters have not withdrawn 30 km from the border as promised, he indicated.
For his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned Thursday that any rapprochement with his Turkish counterpart should have as a precondition “the end of the Turkish occupation” in northern Syria.
Turkey has launched three offensives on Syrian soil since 2016 against Kurdish forces in the north, which have allowed it to control a border strip on the Syrian side.
Ankara had established itself since 2011 as the main support for the rebels fighting the Damascus regime.
Mr. Kalin also specified that the next Turkish presidential election would take place in May and not in June as initially planned, adding that the date had not yet been set.