Alwaght- Turkey's top military commander called on Sunday his Iranian counterpart and gave assurances that Ankara respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria.
Chief of the General Staff of Turkey General Hulusi Akar in a phone conversation with Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri gave assurances that Ankara respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria.
Akar, who initiated the phone call, told his Iranian counterpart that Turkey respected Syria’s territorial integrity and remains committed to agreements reached in trilateral talks with Iran and Russia on the situation in the Arab country.
He said the main reason for Turkey’s aerial bombardment, shelling and ground incursion into Syria's Afrin, over the weekend, was to counter the assembly of “terrorist groups” in the area and the threat they pose to Turkey’s border towns and villages.
The attacks were carried out by the Turkish army within the framework of the right to self-defense, he added.
Major General Baqeri, for his part, stressed the need for Syria’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity to remain intact and said Turkey ought to give assurances that it has no intention of undermining them.
Iran’s top general added that such measures should not set the ground for exploitation by the enemies of Syria and the Muslim world, especially the US and its allies, to advance their expansionist policies in Syria. Nor should they undermine the trilateral negotiations between Tehran, Moscow and Ankara and the Astana peace talks on Syria that have produced some achievements so far.
On Saturday Turkey launched the so-called Operation Olive Branch in a bid to eliminate the US-backed YPG, predominantly Kurdish militias which Ankara views as a terror organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The latter has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.
The operation was launched days after Washington said it would work with the Kurdish militants to set up a 30,000-strong border force near Turkish soil, a move that infuriated Ankara.
