Syria flag (flickr).
Senior diplomats from Russia, Turkey, Iraq and Syria will hold talks on the normalization process between Ankara and Damascus this month, Al-Watan reported on June 5.
Citing an informed source based in the Russian capital, Moscow, the Syrian daily said that the quadruple talks will be held on the sideline of the upcoming Astana summit, which take place on June 20 and 21, the
“Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Soussan will represent the Syrian side in this meeting, which comes based on the outputs of the last quadruple ministerial meeting,” the source said.
Ankara and Damascus were close allies before the outbreak of the war in Syria more than a decade ago. Turkey first called for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad and his government and armed the rebels. Later, it sent its military to occupy vast parts of Syria’s northern region under the pretext of fighting ISIS and Kurdish forces.
Damascus has repeatedly called on Ankara to withdraw its troops from Syria’s northern regions in the course of the normalization process, which is sponsored by both Russia and Iran.
The Turkish-Syrian normalization process saw a major breakthrough in December when the defense ministers of Ankara and Damascus met in Moscow for the first time since the outbreak of the Syrian war. In May, the foreign ministers of Russia, Syria, Turkey held high-level talks on the normalization process, also in Moscow.
The Turkish general elections forced a temporary halt in normalization talks during May. The victory of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party, the Justice and Development, secured the fate of the talks.
One of Erdogan’s first decisions after winning the elections was appointing intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, who was credited with launching the talks with Syria, as the new foreign minister of Turkey.
Korhan Qaraqosh, the director of Syria’s policy in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, told the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV after the elections that the upcoming round of normalization process could be “decisive” for reaching a settlement. However, he didn’t clarify if Ankara was willing to pull its troops out from the war-torn country.
All in all, the Turkish-Syrian normalization process is expected to move faster in the upcoming months. However, a final normalization agreement and a reconciliation summit between Erdogan and Assad remain uncertain.
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