CHP leader: I’ve made contacts with Assad and I will go to meet him in Damascus

Özgür Özel, leader of Türkiye’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), reported that he had made contact with Syrian President Bashar al Assad and announced his intention to meet him soon in Damascus.

During a television interview, Özel said, “We’ve reached out to Assad and will be visiting Damascus with a delegation very soon… I plan to go through Lebanon in July,” he said, according to the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper.

“We’ll sit at the table with Assad to discuss and resolve the refugee issue,” he said.

“In Europe, I will go to great lengths to get the necessary funding… We’ll launch a major campaign to address this issue as long as there is a will to address the refugee issue,” he added.

Özel noted that this issue must be seriously resolved in Türkiye, expressing concern about incidents such as those in Kayseri.

He stressed the need to identify registered and illegal refugees, stressing that the current situation is unusual and needs radical solutions.

Özel said he would travel in the coming hours to Bucharest, the Romanian capital, to attend the Bucharest Group of 9 meeting within NATO.

“Our main topic there will be refugees… I spoke to all the ambassadors in Türkiye and told them that we wouldn’t accept being a refugee warehouse”.

Özel criticized the 2016 EU-Türkiye migration agreement, brokered by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a disgrace to the EU’s ideals.
“Although Merkel may see the agreement as a success, it’s a disgrace…
Mr. Erdogan himself noted that Türkiye spent $48 billion on Syrian refugees,” Özel said.

Finally, Özel stressed that he wouldn’t accept any attempt to expel Türkiye from the meeting, noting that refugees aren’t a burden that must be borne by Türkiye alone, but part of the responsibility should be borne by the European Union.