“What some Turkish officials declare from time to time is incorrect, that Syria said that if the withdrawal does not happen, we will not meet with the Turks,” Assad said while addressing the parliament. “This talk is far from reality.”
Through the conflict in Syria, 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.
Assad, however, reiterated that Ankara needs to withdraw from Syria and “stop its support for terrorism.”
Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he might invite Assad to Turkey, a month after Assad told a top Russian delegation of his “openness 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,” according to a statement from his office released at the time.
When the war erupted in Syria, Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkey, slammed Assad for committing violence against his own people. Erdogan demanded the removal of the Syrian president from power and labeled him a “terrorist.”
Syrians rose against the Assad regime in March 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, left millions more in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
More than 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than 6 million of whom are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures. Millions of Syrians are living in Turkey.
