Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to Bashar al-Assad’s call for withdrawing the Turkish forces from Syria, saying that his country will not withdraw its forces from Syria because the “terrorist” threat remains there.
Erdogan said in an interview with “CNN” on Friday that the reason for presence the Turkish forces inside the Syrian territories is to fight terrorism responding to Bashar al-Assad’s demand during the 32nd Arab League summit in Jeddah to withdraw the Turkish forces from Syria.
Erdogan pointed out that “Turkey shares more than 900 kilometers of border with Syria, and there is a permanent “terrorist” threat to our national security from those borders, and our presence there is only to protect our borders.”
Erdogan criticized the opposition’s call for deporting the Syrian refugees from Turkey, and claimed that his country has projects to build homes and infrastructure in northwest Syria for their safe return.
Bashar al-Assad attacked during the 32nd Arab League summit held in Jeddah on Friday the Turkish policy, warning of “an expansionist ideology derived from the Ottoman era grafted with a perverted fraternal flavor,” and called on Turkey to withdraw its forces completely from Syrian territory.
