Turkey has amassed 80 tracked military vehicles, including tanks as part of its military reinforcements along its southern border with Syria, a military source said on Sunday.
The military vehicles were brought to the border line near the Iskenderun district in the southern province of Hatay.
The new deployment is part of a fresh reinforcement for troops already stationed there, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media.
On Saturday, the army also dispatched a number of heavy equipment, first aid trucks and military vehicles to the same district.
Another convoy of armoured vehicles was heading towards Hatay’s Rehyanli district along the Syrian border, the source added.
De-escalation zones
On Friday, Turkey’s foreign ministry said Russia, Iran and Turkey had agreed to deploy observers around a de-escalation zone in northern Syria’s Idlib region.
It said the observers would look to prevent clashes between forces of the Syrian regime and the opposition, and watch for ceasefire violations.
In December 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to suggest Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, as a new venue to carry on the Syrian peace talks.
The first round of negotiations began in January 2017, and the sides are now meeting in the sixth round.
The focus in Astana was to provide security for civilians by creating de-escalation zones, a plan Turkey had long insisted on.
In May, Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to establish four de-escalation zones, with the largest one in Idlib province.
In the three earlier agreed zones, hostilities were drastically reduced with the assistance of Russia, Iran, Egypt, the US and Jordan.
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