(Al-Bab) Hundreds of opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad demonstrated Friday in northern Syria against a possible agreement between Ankara and Damascus the day after a tripartite meeting in Moscow.
It was the first official meeting at ministerial level between Turkey and Syria since the start of the war in Syria in 2011 which saw Ankara take the side of Syrian rebel groups.
“Revolution is an idea, you can’t kill an idea,” read banners held in Arabic, Russian and Turkish by hundreds of protesters gathered in al-Bab, according to an AFP photographer.
This city located in the north of the province of Aleppo is controlled by Syrian opposition factions loyal to Turkey.
PHOTO OMAR HAJ KADOUR, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Hundreds of opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad demonstrated in northern Syria on Friday.
“We cannot reconcile, we do not want to reconcile” with the Syrian government, hammered Sobhi Khabiyeh, 54 and displaced from the suburbs of Damascus, calling President Assad a “criminal”.
“Don’t ally with Assad against us,” he added, addressing Turkey.
On Thursday, the Turkish and Syrian and Russian defense ministers notably discussed “ways to resolve the Syrian crisis” and “joint efforts to combat extremist groups”, according to Russia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has repeatedly called Mr. Assad a “murderer” in recent years, spoke last month of a “possible” meeting with him.
Demonstrations against this rapprochement have taken place in other regions of northern Aleppo province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a UK-based NGO with a wide network of sources in the country.
“Rather die than reconcile with Assad”, launched the demonstrators in particular.
In the city of Idlib (north-west), under the control of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham (HTS, former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda), dozens of people chanted slogans hostile to the Turkish president.
“I have come to express my rejection of statements calling for a rapprochement with the criminal Assad regime,” said Salwa Abdel Rahman, a protester, in Idlib.
The meeting in Moscow took place as Turkey has in recent weeks intensified its bombardment against positions of Kurdish fighters, whom it describes as “terrorists”, in northern Syria and threatens to launch a ground offensive against them to which she would like to get the green light from Damascus and Moscow.
In the northeast of the country, a region dominated by the Kurds, the Syrian Democratic Council, political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, armed coalition led by the Kurds), said in a press release watching the meeting on Thursday “with suspicion”. , calling on the Syrians to “confront this alliance”.