Turkey, Iran vow to continue alliance with Russia on Syria

The presidents of Turkey and Iran on Tuesday vow to press on with their alliance alongside Russia over Syria, the Turkish presidency says after Ankara backed strikes by the US and its allies against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Russia and Iran are the key allies of Assad and their military intervention in Syria is widely seen as helping him stay in power and tipping the balance in the civil war.

But Moscow and Tehran have over the last months worked increasingly closely with Ankara — which has throughout the seven-year war called for Assad’s ouster — in seeking to find a solution to the conflict.

In an interview with French television, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that the weekend airstrikes against Syrian government targets had succeeded in engineering a split in the Russia-Turkey alliance.

But a Turkish presidential source said, following telephone talks between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, that the two sides had vowed the alliance must continue.

— AFP