HANGZHOU, September 5. /TASS/. Turkey and Russia cooperate on issues of the ceasefire regime in Syria and normalization of the situation in Aleppo, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday at a news conference after the Group pf Twenty (G20) summit in China, shown on the TRT TV channel.
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"We cooperate with the coalition, more with the NATO countries. But we also develop cooperation with Russia, especially on the region of Aleppo. The work is underway to urgently ensure the ceasefire regime observance in the region," he said.
According to Erdogan, "the Russian, US and Turkish foreign ministers discuss this topic." "I hope that before the Eid al-Adha holidays (September 11) this will be done, and the Aleppo population will be saved from the bombs. We want to achieve this goal", he said.
Answering the question about the success of the military operation Euphrates Shield, Erdogan said that Turkey’s border area has been "fully cleared of terrorists." He added that "the operation does not threaten Syria’s territorial integrity."
On August 24, the Turkish troops, together with the opposition Syrian Free Army launched an operation in the north of Syria, during which they took control of Jarablus and ousted militants of the Islamic State (IS, banned in Russia) terrorist group from it. Damascus condemned the operation, calling it a direct violation of Syria's sovereignty.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said, denouncing the Turkish troops’ incursion into Syria that "any move to combat terrorism on Syrian territories should have been coordinated with the Syrian government and army." The statement also calls for an immediate end to the Turkish "aggression," which it says is being carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism. "Fighting terrorism cannot be undertaken by ousting Daesh and replacing it with other terrorist organizations directly backed by Turkey," the ministry said, quoted by the SANA news agency. Daesh is the Arabic language acronym for IS. The statement added that Turkish tanks and armored personnel carriers crossed into Syria under the cover of US-led coalition airstrikes.