“I fully support the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to get NATO more involved in Syria to help Turkey defend Idlib against Russian\/Syrian aggression,” Graham wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fall of Idlib would be a humanitarian crisis for the world and would directly affect our European allies \u2013 for that reason NATO should be more supportive of Turkey.”<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Syrian regime forces have stepped up attacks on Turkish troops in Idlib amid their offensive in the region.<\/p>\n
The Turkish soldiers were working to protect local civilians under a 2018 deal with Russia under which acts of aggression are prohibited in the region.<\/p>\n
Ankara launched Operation Spring Shield on Feb. 27 after at least 34 Turkish soldiers were martyred in Idlib.<\/p>\n
Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed to a new ceasefire for Idlib effective as of midnight on March 5.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement, all military activities are to end in Idlib with the establishment of a security corridor 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) to the north and south of the key M4 highway.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday threw his support behind U.S. efforts to help Turkey amid a halted offensive in Syria\u2019s Idlib province. “I fully support the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to get NATO more involved in Syria to help Turkey defend Idlib against Russian\/Syrian aggression,” Graham wrote on Twitter. \u201cThe fall of Idlib would be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,1,118,37,103,101,171,174,173,188],"tags":[77689,75506,78478],"class_list":["post-65034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-middle-east","category-only-on-nationalturk","category-politics","category-turkey","category-turkey-daily","category-turkey-headlines","category-turkey-politics","tag-idlib","tag-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}