Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had raised the idea in his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barak Obama at the G20 leaders’ summit in Hangzhou, China.
"A no-fly zone could be set up there, and that was my suggestion to both Obama and Putin. This could be achieved with the coalition forces. We are in an effort to take this step,” Erdogan said at news conference on Monday.
Turkey is hosting 3 million Syrian refugees and has made an agreement with Europe to stem the flow of migrants reaching European shores from Turkey. Ankara has long advocated for the establishment of a safe zone in northern Syria as a remedy to the refugee crisis.
“The Syrian citizens in our country and those would want to migrate from Syria can now find the opportunity to live more peacefully in their own land and their own houses," Erdogan said.
Ankara had earlier raised the idea of a safe-zone at a G20 meeting last November in Antalya, calling for an area that would reach about 40 kilometres into Syria and would be protected by an internationally-policed no-fly zone.
The Turkish army entered Syria on August 24 as part of its operation Euphrates Shield, the aim of which was to clear ISIS from its border and to stop the progress of Kurdish forces.
Rebels backed by Ankara fighting as part of the Euphrates Shield declared on Sunday that a 90-kilometre corridor along Syria’s border with Turkey had been cleared of Islamic State. The rebels, under the Free Syrian Army banner, are now in control of the border from Jarablus to Azaz, the Turkish military confirmed in a statement.
Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition, welcomed the news, saying on Twitter that Islamic State terrorists “increasingly have no way out.”
Welcome progress in sealing final 98-kilometer strip of Turkish border from #ISIL terrorists, who increasingly have no way out. #ISIS #Daesh
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) September 5, 2016
