ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday he had told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a recent phone call to “leave Turkish forces alone to fight the [Syrian] regime” in northwest Syria.



“I asked Putin for Russia to leave Turkish forces alone to fight the regime. We can’t seem to understand Russia’s intentions there,” Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul.



The Russian and Turkish leaders spoke on the phone on Friday following the death of 33 Turkish soldiers in Syrian regime strikes in the northwestern province of Idlib. Erdogan said Saturday the death toll has now risen to 36.



Erdogan told Putin that all regime forces and their allies are “legitimate targets”, according to the Turkish presidency’s communications director Fahrettin Altun.



Backed by the Russian air force, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied groups launched a massive offensive against the armed opposition in Idlib – last rebel bastion – and Aleppo in December, recapturing more than a hundred towns and villages it lost since the early years of Syrian civil war in 2011.



The killing of five Turkish soldiers and a civilian contractor by regime forces in early February pushed brought already strained relations between Ankara and Damascus to the brink, with Turkey conducting several retaliatory attacks against the SAA. At least 56 Turkish soldiers have been killed in Idlib in February alone.



As a result, regime-supporter Moscow and rebel-backer Ankara have been locked in a war of words, each accusing the other of failing to adhere to their 2018 de-confliction deal over Idlib.



Turkey targeted regime positions in Aleppo on Friday, reportedly killing several senior commanders.



The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said dozens of regime-supporters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah were also killed in the strikes.



Farsnews, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported the death of an Iranian cleric, Sayyid Ali Zanjani, in Idlib late Friday.



Erdogan claimed on Saturday that 2,100 regime forces have been killed by Ankara this month.



Syrian regime forces have surrounded most of the 12 Turkish observation posts in Idlib. Erdogan has set Saturday as the deadline for regime troops to withdraw.



Turkey has deployed thousands of troops and heavy weaponry to Idlib.



“Turkey reportedly has 20,000 troops in Idlib in its observation posts and other bases, who have been rotating in and out since 2018; it also has about 2,000 armoured vehicles in the area,” according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).



A Russian Foreign Ministry delegation was in Ankara on Friday to discuss the Idlib situation.



In a statement published on Saturday, the delegations said: “The sides continued discussing specific steps for achieving durable stabilization of the situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone based on the full implementation of the memorandum dated May 4, 2017 and the memorandum dated September 17, 2018.”



“Both sides confirmed their goal to reduce the tension ‘on the ground’ while continuing the war on terrorists recognized as such by the UN Security Council and also to protect civilians inside and outside the de-escalation zone and render emergency humanitarian assistance to all those who need it,” the statement added.

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