ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said that he is still “hopeful” about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a potential Ankara-Damascus rapprochement.
“I am still hopeful about Assad. I still hope we can come together and put Syria-Turkey relations back on track, God willing,” Erdogan told reporters on his flight back to Turkey from Azerbaijan after attending the COP29 climate summit.
“We have extended our hand to the Syrian side for normalization. We believe that this normalization will open the door to peace and stability in Syrian territories,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan was one of the harshest critics of Assad and throughout the Syrian conflict. Turkey has supported rebel forces, including those with links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Turkey has also launched repeated incursions into Syrian territory, most notably against the Kurds in Afrin in 2018, and continues to occupy large swathes of the country’s north.
The Turkish president said in July that he might invite his long-time foe Assad to Turkey, a month after Assad said he was open “to all initiatives related to the relationship between Syria and Turkey, which are based on the sovereignty of the Syrian state over its entire territory.”
Erdogan said that neither Ankara was threatening Syria’s territorial integrity, nor the Syrian refugees scattered around the world, but accused the Kurdish forces, mainly the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of being a threat to the territorial integrity of Syria. Turkey accuses the YPG of being the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“Assad must recognize this and take steps to foster a new climate in his country and take ownership of it,” Erdogan said.
Despite Erdogan’s calls for a rapprochement, Assad, who is backed by Iran and its proxies, has repeatedly preconditioned any potential rapprochement on the full withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria, a prerequisite that Turkey rejects.
The possible rapprochement between the two neighbors sparked riots in the rebel-held northwest Syria, as protesters attacked Turkish-backed factions and Turkish troops in the area in September. However, the anti-rapprochement sentiment is not shared by authorities in the northwest.
On Tuesday, Ahmed Toma, the leader of the Syrian opposition stated his support for the rapprochement if it leads to resolving the Syrian crisis.
“If the approach (between Syria and Turkey) leads to the finding of a resolution in Syria, we certainly support it,” he said.
Syrians rose up against Assad’s regime in March 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and has left millions more in need of dire humanitarian assistance.
Over 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to UN figures.
