Washington: We informed Turkey of the need to achieve a political progress before normalizing relations with Assad regime
US State Department Spokesperson, Vedant Patel, confirmed that US informed Turkey of its position concerning holding talks with Assad regime.
Patel stated yesterday that “it is important to take steps to achieve a political progress and improve the human rights condition in Syria before normalizing with the Assad regime.”
Patel emphasized that “Our position has been clear and will not normalize relations with Assad regime in the absent of authentic progress toward a political solution to the main conflict.”
Patel continued: “We were clear with the regional partners including Turkey. The US stressed with its regional partners that Assad regime need to cooperate in the political process stipulated in UNSCR 2254.
The past few days witnessed an exchange of messages between Turkey and the Assad regime, as each of them expressed their desire to improve relations with the other and begin a dialogue to end the estrangement.
During his meeting with the special envoy of Russian President Alexander Lavrentiev last week, Bashar al-Assad expressed his regime’s openness to all initiatives related to developing relations with Turkey, and he said only that they must be “based on the sovereignty of the Syrian state.”
While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed in a statement last Friday, his country’s willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Bashar al-Assad, considering that “there is no reason why diplomatic relations should not be established, and we will continue to develop relations as we did in the past.”
In late 2022, Turkey had previously engaged in talks with the Assad regime under the auspices of Russia and then with Iran’s participation. Several meetings were held at the level of the intelligence services and the defense and foreign ministers, but they failed due to the Assad regime’s preconditions, on the top was the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory.
