The Turkish army will leave Syrian territory once a settlement to the conflict is reached there, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday during his visit to Norway.
“If a political settlement in Syria is found, our army will pull out. However, now the [President Bashar al-Assad’s] regime does not believe in a political deal,” the NTV channel quoted the minister as saying.
In early July, the Erdogan administration laid out its plans to conduct a military operation in northern Syria. Ankara views the Kurdish armed groups located there as a threat to national security.
Cavusoglu also said that Russia had assured Turkey that the Syrian army would not attack Turkish observation posts in the Idlib Governorate.
“Russia has guaranteed us that the Syrian regime’s forces would not attack our observation posts in Idlib,” the newspaper Milliyet quoted him as saying.