“The Kurdish issue will be given its right of place during the negotiations, alongside issues related to curbing terrorism risks and ensuring border security,” Lavrov told Rudaw during a presser in New York.
Russia, the main backer of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, is among the main countries seeking a resolution to the Syrian conflict, including normalizing ties between Damascus and neighboring Ankara.
“The Kurdish people need to negotiate with Damascus, and as far as I understand, the Turkish neighbors are willing to lend a hand,” Lavrov said.
Through the Syrian conflict, Ankara has supported rebel forces opposed to the rule of Assad, including some with links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Turkey has also launched repeated incursions into Syrian territory, most notably against Kurds in Afrin in 2018, and continues to occupy large swathes of the country’s north.
Lavrov called on the Syrian Kurds to “categorically” disassociate themselves with “terrorists,” presumably referring to groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for decades in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights but is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
“They [the Kurds] need to finally understand that they have no way out other than to live within the Syrian state,” he stressed.
Syrians rose up 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 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, and more than six million are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures. Millions of Syrians are living in Turkey.
Sinan Tuncdemir contributed to this report.
