Russia To Help Implement Ankara-Damascus Agreement On Fight Against PKK - Cavusoglu

Sumaira FH Published October 23, 2019 | 03:08 PM

Russia as the guarantor state to the Syrian settlement will help Ankara and Damascus in implementing the 1998 bilateral Adana pact on combating the activity of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is officially listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday

ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd October, 2019) Russia as the guarantor state to the Syrian settlement will help Ankara and Damascus in implementing the 1998 bilateral Adana pact on combating the activity of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is officially listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.

The 1998 deal aimed at restoring bilateral relations between Damascus and Ankara following a crisis that erupted due to Syria sheltering militants linked to the PKK. Under the agreement, Syria had to halt PKK activities on its territory, while Turkey, in turn, gained the opportunity to take appropriate measures to deter the terrorist threat.

"We have no direct contact with Syrian regime, which has no capacity to implement the Adana deal.

Therefore, Russia as a guarantor state will help to implement it. We agreed about that yesterday. Those terrorists who will not leave [the security zone] will be neutralized," Cavusoglu told Anadolu news agency in an interview.

According to him, the joint Russian-Turkish patrolling activity in the security zone in Syria is not limited in time.

"It will continue until the complete settlement," he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreed Tuesday that the Russian military police and Syrian forces would patrol the area along the Syrian border with Turkey as part of the Russian-Turkish memorandum on stabilizing the situation in north Syria.