Turkey Agrees to Withdraw Troops From Syria Should Damascus Take Political Steps

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria requires steps in the political process, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday.

"Steps must be taken in the political process for our troops to leave. If there are voids, terrorist organizations should not fill them," Cavusoglu said as quoted by a local newspaper.

Earlier in the day, the Syrian media reported citing sources that Ankara had agreed to withdraw its troops from Syrian territory after the defense ministers of Turkey, Syria and Russia met in Moscow on December 28.

On December 15, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he had offered to Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Syria, which would be preceded by a meeting of the heads of the intelligence services, defense and foreign ministries. On December 28, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the defense ministers of Russia, Syria and Turkey held trilateral talks in Moscow to discuss ways to resolve the Syrian crisis. The talks marked the first official meeting between Ankara and Damascus in 11 years.

Also, Ankara has proposed to hold a meeting of Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers in the second half of January, possibly in a third country, Cavusoglu said on Saturday.

"We said let's do it in the second half of January. The meeting could take place in a third country," Cavusoglu said answering the question about the possible foreign ministers meeting, as quoted by a local broadcaster.

Cavusoglu also said he plans to discuss the possibility of a top-level meeting with his Syrian counterpart at an upcoming meeting.

"First we met on a technical level, then on a military level, and now on a political level. We will work on whether it will be at a higher level in the future or not," Cavusoglu added.

The war in Syria has been ongoing since 2011, with various armed insurgent groups, including terrorist organizations, fighting the Syrian Army in an attempt to topple the government of President Bashar Assad. Since 2016, the Turkish armed forces have also been conducting air and ground operations in Syria against armed Kurdish groups. Moscow and Ankara have been acting as mediators in the conflict within various frameworks, such as the mediation group on the Syrian settlement in Astana launched together with Iran in 2017 or the Congress of the Syrian national dialogue hosted in the Russian city of Sochi in 2018.