President Assad Insists on Withdrawal of Turkish Troops From Syria
A Turkish military convoy in Syria, 2020. Photo: X/ @PressTV
August 25, 2024 Hour: 11:31 am
These countries interrupted their diplomatic relations in 2013, when the war broke out inside Syria.
On Sunday, President Bashar al-Assad stated that Türkiye must withdraw its troops from northern Syria and stop supporting opposition groups in order to move towards the restoration of diplomatic relations.
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“Restoring relations first requires eliminating the reasons that led to their destruction. We will not renounce any of our rights, and Syria consistently insists on the need for Türkiye to withdraw from the territories it occupies and to end its support for terrorism,” he said before the People’s Assembly.
“Any negotiation process needs a reference point on which it can be based to succeed,” he stressed, regretting that previous initiatives mediated by third countries failed to take hold due to the lack of such reference points that could establish the basis for an agreement between both parties.
In this way, Assad reiterated his conditions for sitting down to negotiate with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after Russia proposed in early August to host a meeting between the two leaders.
Both Erdogan and Assad made statements in favor of restoring diplomatic relations and a possible meeting. In early July, the Turkish president stated that he was willing to begin, under Russian mediation, a process of normalizing relations with Syria, which were broken off in 2011 after the outbreak of the civil war in which Ankara supports the rebels.
In mid-July, Assad also expressed support for a meeting with Erdogan, but insisted that the focus should be on the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria and the end of their support for opposition groups. Relations between the two countries were severed at the beginning of the Syrian civil war nearly 13 years ago, after Ankara began supporting groups that rose up against the Assad government.
Currently, Türkiye controls several areas in northern Syria that it took during three cross-border offensives between 2016 and 2019 and de facto administers these regions in collaboration with armed rebel groups opposed to Damascus.
teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE
