Erdogan’s New Approach Towards Damascus; Turkey’s FM Meets with Syrian Opposition

Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syrian opposition leaders this Friday to reportedly mediate rapprochement between them and the Syrian government.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey announced in a short post on X this Friday that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan met with the political opponents of the Syrian government, including Hadi Al-Bahra, the head of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), Bader Jamous, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), and Abdul Rahman Mustafa, the head of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG).

“In the meeting, recent developments regarding the conflict in Syria were discussed. Turkey reiterated its support for efforts aiming at substantial, realistic dialogue and negotiations that will pave the way for a comprehensive political solution within the UNSCR 2254 framework,” the foreign ministry wrote.

The last series of meetings between Damascus and the Syrian opposition was held in Geneva back in 2017, which ended unsuccessfully due to contradicting ideas from both sides. Now, however, the Turkish government plans to revive these meetings as a mediator to hopefully end or at least reduce to a manageable degree the rivalry between them.

Why Turkey is now a fan of Assad?

After the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey initially intended to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But after supporting various rebel groups in Syria, Ankara later focused more on preventing Kurdish forces from controlling areas in northern Syria bordering Turkey. Ankara considers Syrian Kurds as terrorists.

In recent weeks, however, Erdogan has made a conciliatory gesture towards Damascus, saying in early July, for example, that he would like to invite Assad to Turkey “whenever he wants”.

“We will extend our invitation (to Assad); with this invitation, we want to restore Turkey-Syria relations to the same level as in the past. Our invitation may be extended at any time,” Erdogan said during an interview by Turkish media on July 6.

Experts believe that asserting more control over the Kurds living in Syria-Turkey borders, and returning more than 3.2 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey are among the chief causes why Erdogan has been so soft and friendly towards Assad’s government in recent weeks.

But Syria has repeatedly stated that reconciliation talks, especially a possible meeting between President Bashar al-Assad and Erdogan, will not take place until Ankara shows serious willingness to withdraw its occupying forces from the Syrian soil and show its support to end its support for extremist armed groups in Syria.