On November 5, Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin revealed during an interview to the Turkish NTV channel that the planned Syrian National Dialogue conference in the Russian city of Sochi has been postponed.
Kalin said that Turkey was in the middle of deciding whether to accept or decline the Russian invitation to the Syrian National Dialogue Conference when Russia informed it that the conference has been postponed.
“We found out that the congress was announced as a fait accompli. We immediately objected… Afterwards, the Kremlin contacted us and stated that they had postponed this meeting,” Kalin said according to NTV.
Previously, Turkey criticized the invitation of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) to Sochi conference. Turkey consider both parties a terrorist organizations.
Meanwhile, Sargon Hadaya a journalist of the Russian RT network, said that the Syrian National Dialogue Conference in Sochi has been postponed by Russia. Sargon didn’t provide any further details on issue.
مصادر @RTarabic : تأجيل مؤتمر سوتشي للحوار الوطني السوري
— Sargon Hadaya (@SargonHadaya) November 5, 2017
Back on October 31, most Syrian opposition groups linked to Saudi Arabia and Turkey announced that they will not attend the Sochi conference for various reasons, among it the invitation of the Kurdish parties.
Even some Syrian pro-government activists criticized the conference when it was first announced out of fear that the Kurdish parties might present some unknown figures as representatives of some ethical and religious groups in Syria that oppose these Kurdish parties in reality.
The fail of Sochi conference is yet another confirmation that many regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Turkey are against giving the Syrian Kurds any form of legitimacy, at least for now.
