2024-08-03 06:11:39
While Syria continues to deny all news about upcoming meetings between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara has confirmed these talks again!
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may meet in a third country to hold joint talks.”
In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Sabah, Fidan said, “Ankara wants Damascus to hold a dialogue with the Syrian opposition.”
“If the meeting is held, it will be held in a third country,” Fidan added, noting that “the dialogue with Syrian officials about the place and date of the meeting is ongoing, but there are no specific dates yet.”
The minister pointed out that “the Syrian side is ready to hold a meeting without any preconditions,” adding that “reconciliation with the Syrian opposition is the task of the Syrian authorities, and Ankara encourages this, but it cannot force them, and the option of reaching an agreement with Damascus and ignoring the opposition is impossible.”
“The authorities must hold a dialogue with the opposition so that they can start discussing solutions to the problems,” Fidan said.
Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that he was “working on organizing a meeting between Erdogan and Assad, but it is too early to talk about anything concrete,” and Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that “Russia, like other countries, is interested in improving relations between Turkey and Syria.”
Syria recently announced its position on restoring relations with Turkey, stressing that “this proposal must be based on respect for the common interests of the two countries.”
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “Syria believes that the outcome of these initiatives is not a media goal, but rather a purposeful path based on existing facts and built on specific principles governing the relationship between the two countries, the foundation of which is respect for sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, and confronting everything that threatens their security and stability, and serving the common interest of the two countries and peoples.”
She added: “Syria stresses that any initiative in this regard must be built on clear foundations to ensure achieving the desired results, which are represented by the return of relations between the two countries to their normal state, and at the forefront of those foundations is the withdrawal of forces present illegally from Syrian territory, and combating terrorist groups that threaten not only Syria’s security, but Turkey’s security as well.”
The Foreign Ministry explained that Syria “has always been keen to make a clear distinction between peoples on the one hand, and the policies and practices of governments that have harmed Syria and its countries on the other hand, as proven by facts and events.”
She also stated that “the interest of countries is based on sound relations between them, not on conflict or hostility. Based on that, Syria was keen to deal positively with the various initiatives put forward to improve relations between it and those countries. In the same context, Syria dealt with the initiatives to correct the Syrian-Turkish relationship.”
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2024-08-03 06:11:39