ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that he hopes the rebel offensive in Syria goes off “smoothly,” adding that the situation is the result of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s obstinacy towards Ankara’s efforts to repair their relationship. “Idlib, Hama, Homs, and of course, the target is Damascus. The opposition's advance continues. Our hope is that this advance in Syria proceeds smoothly and without incident,” Erdogan told journalists after Friday prayers in Istanbul. A coalition of Syrian rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), in a surprise offensive launched last week, have taken control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, as well as the strategic city of Hama. Regime forces have largely withdrawn in the face of the rebel advance. Erdogan said the regime’s losses were the consequence of Assad’s stubbornness towards Turkey’s calls for a rapprochement. “We made a call to Assad, saying 'come, let's determine the future of Syria together.’ Unfortunately, we did not receive a positive response to this,” he said. Ankara has backed rebel groups throughout Syria’s civil war and Erdogan has been harshly critical of Assad. However, in July, the Turkish president said that he might invite his long-time foe 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.” Despite Erdogan’s calls for a rapprochement, Assad, who is backed by Iran and its proxies, has repeatedly preconditioned any potential thaw in their relationship on the full withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria, a prerequisite that Turkey rejects. 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 humanitarian assistance.
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