Erdogan confirms presence of Turkey-backed Syrian fighters in Libya

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday confirmed for the first time that pro-Turkish Syrian fighters are in Libya alongside training teams dispatched by Turkey.
“Turkey is there with a training force. There are also people from the Syrian National Army”, Erdogan told reporters.
On Thursday, Libya’s rival factions resumed peace talks, aimed at brokering a lasting ceasefire in the war-torn country, after its UN-recognised government, GNA, announced it was halting its participation from the talks following an attack on a strategic port in the capital, Tripoli by the rival militia of Khalifa Haftar’s LNA.
Turkey is the main GNA supporter, while the LNA is backed by the United Arab Emirates, France, Russia and Egypt. The UN has been aiming to push to cut off external military support for the warring factions, as the United Arab Emirates and Turkey refuse to stop arming their allies.
On Friday, just after the UN said ceasefire talks were back on track, Haftar said that his conditions for a ceasefire were “withdrawal of Syria and Turkish mercenaries, Turkey stopping supplies of weapons to Tripoli and the liquidation of terrorist groups”. There was no immediate comment from the GNA.
On Saturday, Erdogan said he would hold a summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on 5 March to discuss the escalating violence in Syria’s Idlib region. The announcement comes after Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad made major gains in northwestern Syria that led to his troops consolidating control over Aleppo province.
Erdogan did not say where the summit would take place, but confirmed that French president Emanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel proposed a Syria summit in Istanbul and that Russian president Vladimir Putin was yet to respond.