ANKARA TO HOST TALKS BETWEEN UNEASY SYRIA ALLIES

▶ Discussions in Turkey take place amid fighting in rebel-held Idlib

The leaders of Turkey, Russia and Iran will meet next month to try to resolve differences over Syria that have prevented them from imposing a peace deal on the war-torn country.

Ankara, the Turkish capital, will be the venue for the September 11 talks to “discuss all aspects of the Syrian crisis”, Alexander Lavrentyev, Russia’s special envoy for Syria, told the Tass news agency.

This meeting will be the second time this year that Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani of Iran have met to discuss Syria.

The three have mostly sidelined the US since agreeing to co-operate on Syria in 2017. But since then, they have struggled to agree on the limits of their respective influence.

They are guarantors of the Astana process, which have been talks mostly among themselves – supervised by Moscow – to defeat terrorism and resolve Syria’s civil war.

This process contributed to the freezing of US-backed international peace talks in Geneva.

Talks in Kazakhstan focused instead on defeating groups the three countries decided were terrorists and produced mostly nominal ceasefires.

That allowed forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, with backing from Iran and Russia, to recapture territory from the moderate Free Syrian Army and militant rebel factions.

Russia and Iran now share an uneasy territorial influence, with Moscow allowing Israeli air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria to go unopposed.

Turkey holds sway over some territory in the north, having pushed back Kurdish fighters it considers to be terrorists but who still control large parts of eastern Syria.

Since the three leaders met in the Russian resort city of Sochi in February, a war between Russian and Turkish allies intensified in the northern province of Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold.

Over the past three years, Idlib has been mostly taken over by Al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir Al Sham militants.

An offensive on Idlib backed by Russia and Iran threatens a major rebel town in the south of the province, even though there are Turkish observation posts in the area.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the Idlib fighting, which has driven many more to seek refuge near the Turkish border and raised tension between Moscow and Ankara.

Turkey has also angered Russia and Iran by negotiating with the US over a planned safe zone in parts of eastern Syria on its border.

This zone would remove territory from the control of Kurdish militias and leave Turkish forces close to, if not in control of, Syria’s major oil and gas resources.

Last December, US President Donald Trump announced a troop withdrawal from Syria but he has since backtracked, leaving a reduced number of special forces soldiers in the east.

A senior Syrian opposition member close to Turkey said the picture “is confused, perhaps more than at any time before”.

He said differences between the three countries extended to the nature of the political order they wanted to impose in a settlement.

Russia and Turkey have largely filled a proposed, UN-supervised constitutional committee with their nominees, to the disadvantage of Iran, opposition sources say.

This committee would draw up a new Syrian constitution.

The opposition member said Turkey wanted the political process to bring down Syria’s Alawite-dominated regime.

But Iran and Russia want the regime to continue, with Tehran adamant about Mr Al Assad staying on as leader, the opposition source said.