Turkish President Recep Tayyip is planned Erdoğan and his Syrian colleague Bashar al-Assad to meet in August, writes today the Turkish newspaper “Hurriet”, quoted by BTA.
According to today's material of the leading analyst from the pro-government publication “Hurriet“ Abdulkadir Selvi is currently preparing for a possible meeting, although such plans were again reported earlier this month, but Turkish diplomatic sources have since denied the reports. No one says there won't be a meeting anymore. The place and conditions are being discussed, writes Abdulkadir Selvi in his material today.
In his words, Russia and Iraq may take the initiative to organize a meeting between Erdogan and Assad. Selvi wrote that the talks could take place in Moscow, Baghdad or at the Kessab checkpoint on the Syrian-Turkish border.
Russian and Syrian presidents Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad met in Moscow last week. On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Laos on the sidelines of the annual meeting of member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Selvi said.
Also following a visit to Syria this month, the plane of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (FSS) director Sergei Naryshkin landed in Ankara, where he met with the head of Turkey's National Intelligence Service MIT Ibrahim Kalan, the analyst noted.
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These contacts show that something is brewing in the sphere of diplomacy, the journalist notes, adding that Erdogan has authorized Fidan to take up the preparations for the meeting with Assad, and the foreign minister said that the Syrian side has not set any preconditions to Ankara in connection with the upcoming talks.
According to the analyst, the USA and Iran are making efforts to prevent the meeting between the presidents of Turkey and Syria. Over the past month, Ankara and Damascus have been sending positive signals about resuming top-level contacts that were broken since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. On his way back from a NATO summit earlier this month, Erdogan said he had sent Assad invited a meeting, which was received positively.