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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on July 12 that he instructed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad to start to restore relations with Damascus.
“I have already called on Assad for a visit to Turkey 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 added, doubling down on his recent normalization rhetoric.
In May, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani revealed that his government was working on reconciliation between Turkey and Syria.
Later in June the rapprochement process between Ankara and Damascus gained more momentum after Assad told Russia’s Syria envoy, Alexander Lavrentyev, that “Syria welcomes” all reconciliation initiatives with Turkey.
Following the statement, Erdogan said that he was ready to talk to the Syrian president. The remarks and a later attack on Syrian refugees in Turkey led to mass protests in Turkish-controlled parts in northern Syria.
Since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Ankara, along with its western partners, supported the Syrian rebels, cutting ties with Assad.
Direct talks between high-level Turkish and Syrian officials launched by Russia in 2022 faltered last year as Damascus pressed for Turkish forces to withdraw from the country.
Now, both sides found themselves in a position where they need to restore relations in order to address serious problems, like the de-facto state United States-backed Kurdish forces are trying to establish in northern and eastern Syria, and the future of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
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