By Maya Gebeily, Orhan Coskun and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT/ANKARA – Syria is resisting Russian efforts to dealer a summit with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan, three sources mentioned on Friday, after greater than a decade of bitter enmity because the outbreak of Syria’s civil struggle.
Erdogan’s authorities helps insurgent fighters who tried to topple President Bashar al-Assad and has accused the Syrian chief of state terrorism, saying earlier within the battle that peace efforts couldn't proceed below his rule.
Assad says it's Turkey which has backed terrorism by supporting an array of fighters together with Islamist factions and launching repeated navy incursions inside northern Syria. Ankara is readying one other potential operation, after blaming Syrian Kurdish fighters for a bombing in Istanbul.
Russia helped Assad flip the tide of the struggle in his favour and says it's in search of a political finish to the battle and needs to carry the 2 leaders collectively for talks.
Erdogan has signalled readiness for rapprochement.
Talking every week after he shook palms with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi final month, after repeatedly saying he couldn't meet a pacesetter who got here to energy in a coup, he mentioned Turkey might “additionally get issues on observe with Syria.”
“There will be no resentment in politics,” he mentioned in a televised dialogue on the weekend.
Nevertheless, three sources with information of Syria’s place on potential talks mentioned Assad had rejected a proposal to fulfill Erdogan with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Two of the sources mentioned Damascus believed such a gathering might increase Erdogan forward of Turkish elections subsequent yr, particularly if it addressed Ankara’s purpose of returning a number of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees from Turkey.
“Why hand Erdogan a victory at no cost? No rapprochement will occur earlier than the elections,” one of many two mentioned, including that Syria had additionally turned down the thought of a international ministers’ assembly.
The third supply, a diplomat with information of the proposal, mentioned Syria “sees such a gathering as ineffective if it doesn't include something concrete, and what they've requested for thus far is the complete withdrawal of Turkish troops.”
Turkish officers mentioned this week the military wanted just some days to be prepared for a floor incursion into northern Syria, the place it has already carried out artillery and air strikes.
However the authorities has additionally mentioned it's prepared for talks with Damascus in the event that they give attention to safety on the border, the place Ankara desires Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters pushed from the frontier and refugees moved into ‘secure zones’.
An Assad-Erdogan assembly could possibly be potential “within the not too distant future”, a supply with information of Turkey’s strategy to the difficulty mentioned.
“Putin is slowly making ready the trail for this,” the supply mentioned. “It could be the start of a serious change in Syria and would have very optimistic results on Turkey. Russia would profit too…given it's stretched in lots of areas.”
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