Turkey beefed up its military positions in Syria’s rebel bastion of Idlib Tuesday as the clock ticked down on a mid-October deadline to remove jihadists from the area. Further complicating Turkey’s task, a war monitor said hundreds of members of the Islamic State group were transferred by the regime to the northwestern region from eastern Syria. Russia, the government’s main ally, and Turkey, the rebels’ top sponsor, agreed last week in Sochi on a plan meant to avert a large-scale regime offensive on Idlib.
