Turkish foreign minister to meet Syria's Assad to start reviving ties

from Daily Sabah

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday said he instructed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to meet with Syrian leader Bashar Assad to start to restore relations with Damascus.

“I have already called on Assad for a visit to Türkiye or a meeting in a third country and I have instructed my foreign minister on this matter,” Erdoğan told reporters in Washington after the NATO leaders’ summit.

“We want to start a new process by overcoming this resentment,” the Turkish president said, doubling down on his recent normalization rhetoric.

For the first time since relations soured over unrest that began in Syria in 2011, Erdoğan last Sunday said Türkiye will extend a formal invitation to Assad, who was once a close friend.

His invitation came after the Syrian leader last month said Damascus was open to all initiatives to revive Turkish-Syrian relations “as long as they are based on respecting the sovereignty of the Syrian state over all its territory and fighting all forms of terrorism.”...

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