FILE PHOTO: Turkish soldiers seen at the border town of Akcakale © Reuters / Murad Sezer
A Turkish military withdrawal from Syria is out of the question and there is little chance the presidents of the two countries will meet in the near future, Orhan Miroğlu, a senior official of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said in an interview with Sputnik that was published on March 18.
Miroğlu told the Russian news agency that the current conditions set by Damascus are not suitable to arrange a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, adding that such a meeting may be possible after the upcoming general elections in Turkey in May.
“Al-Assad demands Turkey to withdraw from Syrian territory, as a condition for normalizing relations with Turkey. It is not permissible to raise the ceiling of demands in diplomatic relations with the start of the talks, if the negotiating parties intend to reconcile, understand and find a solution to the differences,” the AKP official said.
During his recent visit to Moscow, Assad stated in an interview with Sputnik that he would not meet Erdogan until Turkey’s “illegal occupation” of Syrian territory was over.
Ankara broke ties with Damascus when the war first broke out in Syria more than a decade ago. Today, it is considered the main backer of rebels there and its military occupies vast parts of the country’s northern region.
Erdogan called for the departure of Assad on multiple occasions early on in the Syrian war, while Assad accused Turkey of supporting terrorism in his country.
Russia has been making efforts to push forward the Turkish-Syrian normalization process for a few months now. Very recently, Iran joined the talks.
Miroğlu said that Assad’s recent demands gives Ankara the right to ask Damascus to end its “support” for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which holds vast parts of Syria’s northern and eastern region.
“The Syrian military runs part of the Syrian territory in cooperation with the People’s Protection Units [the core faction of the SDF]. So, what is the position of the armed organization of the SDF in relation to the Syrian military?” said Miroğlu, who is a member of the AKP’s Central Decision and Implementation Committee.
When asked by Sputnik if Erdogan would meet Assad in case he won the upcoming elections, Miroğlu said that Ankara will go on with its current foreign policy if this happens.
“If Erdogan wins the presidential elections, we will continue our foreign policy as it is now, but the most important issue is how Turkey will appear after the elections to the world. There are many countries that want to change power in Turkey, especially the United States, part of Europe and some regional players, first and foremost Syrian President Assad,” the AKP official said, adding that a rapprochement with Damascus will not be possible with “the concessions that Assad is demanding.”
“The withdrawal of the Turkish army from Syrian territory is out of the question, as long as the relations between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Democratic Union Party [the political wing of the SDF] continue,” Miroğlu stated.
Moscow was supposed to host a meeting between senior diplomats from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria earlier this week. However, the meeting was canceled due to “technical reasons,” which were likely related to Damascus’s demands.
The Turkish-Syrian normalization process appears to have come to a halt. If no breakthrough is achieved in the next few weeks, the talks may not resume until the elections in Turkey are over. The results of the elections will likely determine the fate of the process.
Erdogan is a zionist pig, nothing new here.
^says the red jew
Muslim Brotherhood you mean
Re kalamara
We need to pray for the success of the PTI in Pakistan as Turkey will need Pakistan’s nuclear protection, like deploying a few dozen nukes to Turkey for deterence. Russia needs to be handled with an iron fist in the levant and pushed out otherwise it will continue to threaten the safety of Muslims there.
Nuclear protection from their bullying of smaller states like Greece, Armenia or Syria.
Nuclear protection from the West and Russia. The events in Syria will get kinetic again soon, and Turkey needs to defend the Sunnis in their new Syrian cities. conventionally, Russia doesn’t stand a chance against Turkey in Syria.
How many Muslims in Europe would return home if things went back to being peaceful like they were before WWI?
Ahhh, but Europeans insist they are all immigrants, not refugees. That way they are not responsible for their own demise and the degradation of their society. All those Arabs and Africans need to be colonized and deserved to be bombed…forever. Now their crap has come home to roost in the Ukr mess and those ‘immigrants’ from Ukr are the worst yet. It’s not yet apparent to the majority that their govs are Nazis. The people demonstrate, but their govs ignore them. Sooner or later they will come to the conclusion that it is the US/Israel they should have feared.
Thankfully, the bombs are now falling in Europe not the Middle East. May Allah expand and prolong the Ukraine war to involve many parts of Europe. Think you’ll bring chaos to the Muslim world and Allah ignore you? It’s never been like that throughout history and never will.
CHRISTIANS WILL FIGHT UNTIL ONE SIDE RUNS TO THE MUSLIMS BEGGING FOR ALLIANCE. SEEMS THAT WAR HAS STATRTED.
Muslim Somalia has called the Christian Ethiopia to fight against Al Shabaab. Enough said.
Christian America and Britain destabilized Somalia in the 90s. They built and armed Alshabab through the Saudis. Ashabab is the primary force fighting Turkey and the Somalian government RIGHT NOW. The U.S. has been in Somalia for years but COULD NOT/DID NOT defeat Alshabab. When Turkey came in, America is suddenly interested in helping Somalia get rid of Alshabab. The U.S. is doing the same it did with ISIS in Iraq. Regardless of America’s cooperation, Alshabab will disappear. Somalia’s troops recently liberated dozens of villages and towns from Alshabab, some were controlled by Alshabab for 15 years.
ETHIOPIA’S GOVERNMENT OWES TURKEY ITS SURVIVAL. The Tigray terrors would have taken Addis Ababa long ago had the TB2s not materialized in Ethiopian skies. Somali troops captured dozens of villages and towns within months with air support from an “un-named” country, according to BBC.
Some of them are wanted in their countries.
Your comment confirms you an enemy of the Muslims and a supporter of Russia. I knew all along that this raproachment won’t happen. Assad just squandered a major chance to enlist more help against America’s “parmanent” occupation of Syria. Mark my words, Erdogan will ignore him from now onwards and punish severely any move by Assad’s forces on Idlib. Assad WILL come back begging for reconciliation with Turkey. This is alos another foreign policy mistake by Russia. I’ve noticed a change in Turkey’s relations with Russia, but I don’t know how far this will get.
I don’t care about Assad, but Erdogan will lose the elections and Kilicdaroglu wants Assad to win.
You are a christian greek after all. The mask finally slipped. Erdogan will only lose in your imagination. Secularist will never get Turkey back even if it means Islamists rigging the election. Get that into your head. There’s no fair game here. The secularists aka hypocrites have never played fair with islamists. So why should we paly fair game with them. Rant as much as you want, but Erdogan will win and later be succeeded by another Islamists.
call it anything you want: Muslim Brotherhood, Extremists, Islamists, Fundametalists, etc. We aren’t bothered by what you think of us. Islam will be revived to its glory. We actually don’t care whether you are happy with that or not.
Redneck…
Shitgrunt, UNHUMAN GENOCIDAL
IT 💨🤡
Yes, Death to kemal atachicken!
Andor is Calling!
Long live the marbled king!
strike sdf through its belly and you will kebab americunt russia and mosshead.
lesbolah can be forgiven by condemning mosshead with more ferocity than with jews themselves due to that sufyanic snare.
But no others, no exceptions.
lesbolah can be forgiven on account of having its balls torn out by soviet communist kgb khazbarah nwo bolshevik stalinist red jews.
They fought against Assad in the civil war in Lebanon but now they are allies.
Never say never. History of Turkey is in withdrawal.
Mr Miroğlu is blowing hard. There is no way the Turkish gov’t can deal with the Kurds without support from Damascus. The Turkish admin has been trying to do this for quite some time without success. Perhaps the proxy terrorists of the Turkish admin in Idlib can settle the Kurd problem?
Whatever happens, the Turkish admin is going to have to leave the territory at some point, or like the isreali apartheid regime, claim ownership.
Turkey is on foreign land in Syria, they cannot make any demand. Assad is right.
Forget the elections, the time to open talks is after Moscow and Brussels have settled the NATO post-1997 expansion as they won’t be a NATO after that, as well as the IMF being toothless if they cannot use sanctions and threats of military invasion. If Turkey wants anything goods from China getting out of ‘foreign lands’ is at the top of the list. The KSA thinks it has 2 months to put Iran on hold. Iran is already a member of BRICS whose human right issues are as good as they can be when under sanctions and covert attacks by NATO, the KSA and Israel. Maybe Syria will be making an ‘occupied territory’ of southern Turkey. Clearly Turkey is all about foreign invasions for NATO rather than quake relief for its own citizens. Turkey is banking on being a NG hub for Europe, that will not happen when the NG will be coming from Iran, a partner of Syria. One that will resist doing business with a nation that is invading Syria, for NATO and Israel and the KSA.
islam is not a religion is all about politics … a satanic ideology and a cult of personality around a paedophile caravan robber
PS
islam kills … stay away from it!
And illiterate to boot…
All these are not made up stories but reality … muslims knows what I am talking about but they will not recon that ever in front of a non musllim … they know that most of the so called “non believers” are useful idiots …
This decision to postpone the withdrawal is related to the ‘elections’ which Erdogan knows he could loose, hence all the news of concessions from Turkiye to the West. Don’t believe it for a minute, there’s a strategy behind all of this until election results have been secured for Erdogan’s future, until than expect more bad news.
Turkey ruling party is evil and sleep in the bed of Zionist dog . they want to kill syria and its people. one side ISrael target syria other side Turkey and thier slave HTS target syria and on the other hand US/SDF targer syria. this all zionist dog are from one tree
Third world Turkeytown, just another impoverished shit hole run by thugs at the beck and call of the angloZionaZi empire of shit. Like a brain dead pit bull the Turk pup gets off the chain occasionally and imagines that it is a free roving hound, but then the ground begins to shake and the teeming slums begin to topple, the chasm opens and voila…the ruling swine get the message and go back to the kennel with tail between its legs until the next delUSional attack where the pit bull imagines it is some kind of Ottoman lion on the rampage and the barking erupts once again. Sooner or later every rabid cur gets put down and I don’t think the Bear will be around the next time when the turkey starts barking at its Natostan dog catcher. Grrrrrrrr!
More of Erdo’s game. He never intends to leave Syria, just as his bed-buddies the US/Israel never plan to leave Iraq/Syria. Having his party deliver the news is his style. He lies and plays the good cop…they play the ‘bad cop’, hoping for more leverage. Sooner or later, his shit will catch up to the little Pasha and that will be the end of him. Putin plays this game with him, giving the fool all the rope he will need. Erdo’s biggest challenge is his over-rated sense of importance…fed by his over-inflated ego.
He just won’t throw Syria’s Sunni Muslims under the bus as Asssad, Russia, Iran desire. Assad wants a 100% reinstatement of his dictatorship. Not gonna happen.