ANKARA (Dispatches) – A Turkish source has told Al Jazeera that Ankara has set a final deadline for Russia and the United States to prevent a ground military operation in northern Syria.
The official said that Turkey has demanded that Moscow and Washington press the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to withdraw within two weeks from Manbij, Tal Rifaat and Kobane (Ayn al-Arab).
Turkey will not extend that deadline, according to the official, and has warned that the alternative will be a military operation against the U.S.-backed SDF, which is largely made up of the Kurdish-dominated so-called People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Ankara considers the YPG to be the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a designated “terrorist” group in Turkey, the U.S., and the European Union. It has threatened a new ground operation against the groups in northern Syria since June, and has stepped up preparations since a bombing in Istanbul blamed on the PKK killed six people on November 13.
Meanwhile, a senior member of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) says Damascus has turned down Ankara’s request for a meeting between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after more than a decade of bitter enmity since the outbreak of Syria’s conflict.
Orhan Miroglu told Russia’s Sputnik news agency that “Syria intends to put off the meeting until after the Turkish presidential election,” which is scheduled to be held on June 18 next year.
On Friday, Reuters news agency reported that despite Russia’s mediation efforts, the Syrian president has resisted meeting with his Turkish counterpart.
According to the report based on three different Syrian sources, Assad rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to meet with Erdogan.
Two of the sources said Damascus believes such a meeting could support Erdogan ahead of next year’s Turkish election, especially if Ankara addresses its goal of repatriating some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Stating that there will be no rapprochement before the upcoming Turkish poll, the source said, “Why hand Erdogan victory for free?” He added that Syria had also turned down the idea of a foreign ministers’ meeting.
A third source, a Syrian diplomat, said Damascus “sees such a meeting as useless if it does not come with anything concrete, and what they have asked for so far is the full withdrawal of Turkish troops.”
Earlier, Erdogan said normalization of relations with crisis-stricken Syria was possible.