Assad: If you don’t do this, I won’t meet Erdogan
Rapprochement efforts between Ankara and Damascus also remained on the agenda during the electoral process in Turkey.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s meeting with his Syrian counterpart Faisal al-Mikdad in Moscow became the highest-level contact between the two countries in 11 years.
AKP vice president and party spokesman Ömer Çelik said: “Right now, it seems that we are close to the normalization stage, the meeting of the leaders on the issue of Syria. Once that stage is completed, the mechanisms for the return of refugees will also work faster,” he said, adding that a meeting between President Erdogan and Syrian leader Bashar Assad was on the table.
Syrian President Assad’s statement about his meeting with Erdogan became the agenda of the Arab press. According to the news reported by Marbuta Haber, Abdulbari Atwan, one of the best-known journalists in the Arab world, spoke about his private meeting with Assad in Damascus this week in a weekly video posted on his news website.
‘He DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING BAD TO ERDOĞAN’
Atwan stated that Assad told him that he would not sit down with Erdogan until the Turkish army is fully withdrawn from Syria. Assad said: “It is not possible for me to meet President Erdogan without a full withdrawal from Syria. All Turkish forces must leave Syria and this withdrawal must be complete. I do not interfere in the internal politics of Turkey and I do not care who will win the elections. It is important to me that the chosen person establish good relations with Syria, develop relations and withdraw from Syria.
“Despite everything Assad has done, he has not said a single bad word about Erdogan,” Atwan said. Also, he did not say a single negative word about the countries that oppose Syria’s return to the Arab League. Stating that Assad said: “We welcome anyone who extends a hand to us,” Atwan noted that he understood from the meeting that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, as well as Iran, would be the leading countries in rebuilding Syria. .
After the meeting in Moscow, Syrian Foreign Minister Mikdad said: “We cannot come to a conclusion with Turkey until the presence of foreign troops on Syrian soil ends.”