by Maya Gebeily, Orhan Coskun and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) – Damascus is resisting Russian efforts to hold a summit between President Bashar al Assad and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have had a deep feud since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Three sources told Reuters on Friday.
Erdogan’s government, which supports anti-Assad fighters in northwestern Syria, has accused the Syrian leader of state terrorism and said during the conflict that no peace solution could be found under his presidency .
Syria replies that Turkey supports terrorism by sponsoring these rebel groups, including Islamist factions, and denounces the ground operations carried out on several occasions by Turkish forces in the north of its territory.
Russia, which sided militarily with Syria in 2015, says it is seeking a political solution to the civil war and wants a rapprochement between Assad and Erdogan, something the Turkish president has been open to for several months.
Speaking a week after shaking hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi after he said he would never meet a coup leader, Tayyip Erdogan said over the weekend that ” there can be no resentment in politics”.
DAMASCUS DOESN’T WANT TO HELP ERDOGAN BEFORE THE ELECTIONS
However, three sources familiar with Syria’s position on possible negotiations said that Bashar al Assad had rejected the proposal for a trilateral meeting with Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.
According to two of these sources, Damascus believes that such a meeting could increase Erdogan’s chances in the 2023 presidential and legislative elections in Turkey, especially if it considers the return to Syria of some 3.6 million Syrian refugees. in Turkey.
“Why offer a victory to Erdogan in exchange for nothing? No rapprochement will happen before the elections,” said one of the sources, adding that Syria had also declined the idea of a meeting between foreign ministers.
“Syria considers such a meeting as useless if it does not lead to something concrete and what it is asking for so far is the total withdrawal of Turkish troops (in Syria)”, observed a third source, diplomatic.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, relayed by several Turkish officials this week, presents as imminent a new Turkish military ground operation in northern Syria, already targeted by artillery fire and air strikes.
But the Ankara government also says it is ready for discussions with Damascus if these focus on security in the border area separating the two countries. Turkey is seeking to drive out Kurdish fighters from the YPG, allied with the United States in the fight against the Islamic State group, from northern Syria.
A meeting between Assad and Erdogan could not take place in the immediate future, said a source familiar with the Turkish position.
“Putin is slowly laying the groundwork for this,” she said. “It would be the start of a major change in Syria and would have very positive effects in Turkey.”
(French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)