President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday said he instructed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to meet with Syrian leader Bashar Assad to start to restore relations with Damascus.
"I have already called on Assad for a visit to Türkiye or a meeting in a third country and I have instructed my foreign minister on this matter," Erdoğan told reporters in Washington after the NATO leaders’ summit.
"We want to start a new process by overcoming this resentment," the Turkish president said, doubling down on his recent normalization rhetoric.
For the first time since relations soured over unrest that began in Syria in 2011, Erdoğan last Sunday said Türkiye will extend a formal invitation to Assad, who was once a close friend.
His invitation came after the Syrian leader last month said Damascus was open to all initiatives to revive Turkish-Syrian relations "as long as they are based on respecting the sovereignty of the Syrian state over all its territory and fighting all forms of terrorism."
Assad also wants Turkish troops backing his opposition and fighting PKK/YPG terrorists out of northern Syria. Türkiye says its support for the Syrian opposition’s armed forces primarily aims to ensure a terror-free northern Syria immediately across the Turkish border, which suffered several cross-border attacks by the PKK in the past, and that it respects Syria’s sovereignty.
"Türkiye is prepared to always stand by a united, prosperous and peaceful Syria after a fair, honorable and inclusive agreement," Erdoğan recently said. "We will not abstain from meeting with anyone we have to, as we have in the past, on this matter."
He also stressed Türkiye would "fulfill its part once the threat of terrorism is entirely eliminated" and that it "only intends to protect its land against divisive intentions."
The Damascus-based regime and Ankara sought reconciliation in 2023 with talks sponsored by Assad’s main backers, Russia and Iran, but so far, meetings of Turkish and Syrian regime ministers have failed to produce a solid result in normalization.
Turkish-Syrian relations saw a decline in 1998 when Türkiye accused Syria of supporting the PKK, a terrorist group responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in its decadeslong terror campaign against Türkiye.
Tensions further escalated in 2011 due to the start of the Syrian civil war and a subsequent influx of migrants numbering over 4 million.
The push for restoring relations also comes after recent riots in central Türkiye that targeted Syrian refugees and led to vandalism of their residences and businesses. The riots triggered suspicions that the riots, coupled with anti-Turkish attacks in Syria’s north, may be the work of a wider provocation as they later spilled over into several Turkish cities.
When asked whether he had any information about "external forces who don’t want Türkiye in Syria stoking the riots in Türkiye," Erdoğan redirected focus to the olive branch Ankara is extending to Assad.
He had previously blamed the Turkish opposition’s "poisonous" rhetoric for stoking anti-refugee sentiment and assured his government would give the "necessary response" to such incidents.