OREANDA-NEWS. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday announced a new large group of refugees traveling from Idlib to the border with the republic. The broadcast of his speech was conducted by the Turkish television channel. “At least 200-250 thousand refugees are moving towards our border. We are trying to prevent this by means of certain measures, but this is difficult work, because we are dealing with people”, he emphasized.

In addition, Erdogan has criticized Western countries that are taking measures against protesters. “Western cities, which were once considered symbols of power, order and freedom, have now become open-air prisons”, he said. The Turkish president also stated that in the future "there will be great disasters in the Western countries, because there are a large number of drug dealers cooperating with terrorist groups" operating on the territory of the republic itself.

Four de-escalation zones were created in Syria in accordance with the agreement reached in May 2017 at the talks in Nur-Sultan by representatives of Russia, Iran and Turkey. The territory of three of them in 2018 came under the control of Damascus. The fourth zone, located in the province of Idlib and parts of the neighboring provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, is still not subject to the government of the republic, with most of it seized by terrorists from the Jebhat al-Nusra organization banned in the Russian Federation.