ANKARA: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for an end to “instability” in Syria and an agreement to stop the civil war which has flared up in a lightning rebel offensive.

“Our greatest wish is for Syria’s territorial integrity and national unity to be preserved, and for the instability that has been going on for 13 years to end with consensus in line with the legitimate demands of the Syrian people,” he said.

“For a long time, we have been drawing attention to the possibility that the spiral of violence in the Middle East could also affect Syria. Recent events have confirmed that Turkiye was right,” he said.

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Turkiye was following events “moment by moment, within the context of its own national security priorities” and would take the necessary steps “to prevent any action that could harm that”, he said.

Turkiye shares a long border with Syria and since 2016, its forces and their proxies have controlled territory in northern Syria where they have conducted multiple raids to expel Kurdish fighters whom it blames for attacks in Turkiye.

Turkiye also hosts some 3.2 million Syrian refugees who have fled since the civil war broke out in 2011. There are concerns the latest bloodshed could swell those numbers.

Diplomatic relations between Ankara and Damascus were broken off when the war began, but since November 2022, Erdogan has sought a rapprochement with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The effort has so far failed.