TURKEY will start training and equipping moderate Syrian rebels from May 9 at a military base in central K?r?ehir province, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu told Yeni ?afak newspaper.
A group of 300 rebels will benefit from the first stage of the program, and will be followed by a second group of 300 fighters. In total, 2,000 rebels are expected to be trained by the end of the year.
On Feb. 19, Turkey signed a deal with the United States to take part in the program, which was originally due to begin in March.
The program will be conducted under the guidance of the Turkish Armed Forces. Ankara and Washington will provide an equal number of trainers, according to the bilateral agreement.
In the second phase, they will be trained in the southern province of Hatay in the use of equipment such as anti-tank weapons and machine guns, before being fully battle-ready in Syria.
Trained rebels are expected to fight both the Daesh (the so-called IS) and the Syrian army, Çavu?o?lu said. The establishment of a safe zone inside Syria would be necessary for the rebels to fight in a secure way, he said, dismissing claims that Turkey would send its own troops to Syria.
Metin Gurcan, a security policy researcher at Ankara's Bilkent University and a former special-forces officer, is cautiously optimistic about Turkey's decision to train and equip Syrian rebels.
“The real picture on the ground makes me cautious. However, further initiatives to adopt a comprehensive defensive military strategy would render me optimistic in the long run,” Gurcan told Al Arabiya News.
Since November 2014, Turkish soldiers have been training Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq as part of the fight against Daesh.
Ufuk Ulutas, director of foreign policy research at SETA Foundation, said countries that support the Syrian opposition, including Turkey and the US, face two options: put boots on the ground to oust President Bashar Al-Assad, or substantively help rebels already on the ground to achieve that. — Al Arabiya News
