Syria’s Assad says Erdogan meeting depends on ‘content’

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Monday he was open to meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan but it depended on the encounter’s “content”, noting Turkey’s presence in Syria is a key sticking point.

Earlier this month, Erdogan said he might invite Assad to Turkey “at any moment”, in a sign of reconciliation after ties between the two countries soured over the war which broke out in Syria in 2011.

“If the meeting were to lead to results or… achieve the country’s interests, I will do it. But the problem… lies in the content of the meeting,” Assad told journalists in Damascus as Syrians voted in parliamentary elections.

Erdogan supported early rebel efforts to topple Assad at the start of the war, but reversed course in recent years. Top officials from both countries met in Russian-mediated talks last year.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Syria’s north, with pro-Turkish forces now controlling large swathes of Syrian border territory.

Assad asked whether the “reference points” for the meeting would be “ending the reasons for the problem, which are support for terrorism, and the withdrawal from Syrian territory?”

These are “the essence of the problem,” he said.

“We are positive towards any initiative to improve the relationship… but that doesn’t mean we go (to a meeting) without rules,” Assad added.

Ankara has recently shifted focus to preventing what Erdogan has dubbed a “terror corridor” opening up in northern Syria.

Ankara views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that dominate the SDF as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a terrorist group.

With United States support, the SDF spearheaded the battle that dislodged Islamic State group jihadists from their last scraps of territory in Syria in 2019.

Erdogan has long said he could reconsider ties with Assad as his government is working to ensure safe and voluntary return of Syrian refugees, which according to the United Nations number 3.2 million in Turkey.

On Saturday, Erdogan announced the imminent end of his government’s operations against PKK fighters in northern Iraq and Syria.

Erdogan said the PKK had been “completely trapped” in both Iraq and Syria, telling young military academy graduates that Turkish forces were “all over them”.

“We will complete the missing points of the security corridor along our southern border with Syria,” he added.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began with the repression of anti-government protests.

It spiralled into a complex conflict drawing in foreign armies and jihadists. (BSS/AFP)