The Turkish Defense Minister sets new demands for dialogue with the Syrian President

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Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said that his country is open to dialogue with the Syrian President, if he holds and wins independent elections.

Güler stated in an interview with CNN Türk that the Syrian president must hold free and independent elections, adding, “If you win, we will meet you or whoever wins”.

He said that his country respects the territorial borders of all its neighbors, and that it doesn’t covet anyone’s lands, pointing to holding meetings with the Syrian government previously in Astana.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Kaçali said that his country didn’t hold any meeting with the Syrian government within the framework of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ responsibility.

Kaçali added, “Our policy on normalization was clear from the beginning… We presented it in a transparent and honest way and we don’t have any preconditions”.

He added, “However, at the end of this process, there is a point we want the Syrian government to reach regarding the political process, the return of Syrians, and the future of Syria”.

At the beginning of last March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that normalization steps between Türkiye and the Syrian government had now become impossible due to the conditions taking place in the Gaza Strip.

Lavrov said, “We affirm our interest in promoting the normalization of relations between Türkiye and Syria… We’ve worked on this, and we are still continuing to work in fact, but practical steps are now impossible due to the situation in Gaza”.

He added, “I mean the bombing that the Americans launched on certain targets belonging to the forces loyal to Iran, and the bombing of Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” noting that such actions “distract attention from the natural process of building relations between Syria and Türkiye” with the participation of the Russian side.

It’s noteworthy that a source in the Turkish presidency denied weeks ago the news that spoke of an upcoming meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al Assad in the Russian capital, Moscow, saying that plans to hold a meeting in Moscow between Erdogan and Assad aren’t known to us.

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