Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Russia's proposal for a new round of talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2 boosts Ankara's hopes for peace, the Anadolu Agency reported, quoted by BTA.
Aboard his plane returning from Azerbaijan, Erdogan said that Turkey was in contact with both sides and added that the boost in peace efforts was an opportunity to achieve lasting peace. “The path to a solution goes through more dialogue, more diplomacy. We are using all our diplomatic power and potential for peace“, Erdogan said, underlining his hopes for the continuation of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.
Regarding the situation in Syria and the process of disbanding the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Erdogan reaffirmed his position on preserving the territorial integrity, national unity and public order in Syria, stressing that Turkey's goal remains the complete elimination of terrorism.
“We have already stated that we welcome the PKK's decision, but we see that the Syrian Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Forces (YPG), which is the PKK's branch in Syria, continues with its subversive tactics“, Erdogan also said, stressing that Turkey is closely following the process of disarming and disbanding the PKK's structures in Syria.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, the EU and The United States announced on May 12 that it had decided to disarm and disband after a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed more than 40,000 lives. Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish militia, the SDF, as an offshoot of the PKK.
Commenting on his visit to Azerbaijan, during which Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev inaugurated the newly built international airport in the city of Lachin, Erdogan said that “the opening of the new airport is a symbol of the process of normalizing the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region“, stressing his hope for “the soon erasure of the traces of the war in the region“.