Countries that support the PKK terrorist organization and its Syrian wing, the YPG, also back Syria's disintegration, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Tuesday.
"It is not in Türkiye's interest that terrorist organizations want to divide Syria," Çavuşoğlu said in a televised interview on TVNET.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Türkiye and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara.
The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria in its fight against the Daesh terrorist group. On the other hand, Türkiye strongly opposed the YPG's presence in northern Syria. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.' support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Türkiye and that terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.
Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns. Underlining that one terrorist group cannot be supported to defeat another, Türkiye conducted its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.
Asked whether Türkiye would meet with the Bashar Assad regime, Çavuşoğlu said: "There are no such plans at the moment, but there may be contacts in the future. Türkiye's efforts regarding the political process are highly sincere."
"We paid the highest price for this war. We are trying to eliminate terrorist organizations and threats against Türkiye."
Stressing that Ankara wanted an end to the bloodshed in Syria, he affirmed that his country's counter-terrorism efforts would continue at full capacity.
Çavuşoğlu also urged actors in Syria to take steps that would pave the way to elections in order to reach an agreement for a new Constitution in the country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week said that he could meet with Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad when the time was right and would not rule that out, reinforcing recent tentative steps to thaw ties between combatants in Syria's war.
"As of now, such a meeting is not on the agenda. But I cannot say it is impossible for me to meet with Assad," Erdoğan told the press conference at the Prague meeting of the European Political Community, adding talks continue at a low level.
Erdoğan hinted that he might meet with him in the future.
"When the right time comes, we can also meet with the president of Syria," he added.
"Our only desire is to clear the terrorist groups from Syria," he also said.
Any normalization between Ankara and Damascus would reshape the decadelong Syrian war. Turkish backing has been vital to sustaining Syrian opposition groups in their last major territorial foothold in the northwest, after Assad defeated the insurgency across the rest of the country, aided by Russia and Iran.
The president has repeatedly stressed that Türkiye will continue its efforts to destroy a "corridor" that terrorists are attempting to build along its border. He added that since Türkiye's cross-border operations in Syria began in 2016, approximately 550,000 uprooted Syrians in Türkiye had voluntarily returned to the resulting safe zones in their country.
In August, Çavuşoğlu highlighted the necessity of a strong central administration to prevent the disintegration of Syria. While Çavuşoğlu said that he had a quick word with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in October in Serbia’s capital Belgrade, the Foreign Ministry underlined that Türkiye would continue to show solidarity with the people of Syria and pursue efforts to find a permanent solution to the Syrian crisis.
There must be a strong administration in Syria to prevent any division of the country, Çavuşoğlu said. “The will that can dominate every corner of its lands can only be achieved through unity and solidarity,” he added. He emphasized the need to take steps for rebuilding of civil war-torn Syria since 2011.
