ISTANBUL, 7 Jul: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his willingness to restore ties with Syria and extended an \u201cinvitation\u201d Sunday to bring back relations to \u201chow they were in the past.\u201d
\nOver 12 years ago, diplomatic ties between Ankara and Damascus were cut off when protests turned into a civil war in Syria. Turkey supported armed opposition groups in the northwest that aimed to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.
\nBefore that, Erdogan and Assad enjoyed close ties, even vacationing together with their families in southern Turkey in 2008. Last week, both indicated their readiness to end tensions and normalize diplomatic relations.
\n\u201cYesterday, we were not enemies with Syria. We met with Assad as a family, \u201d Erdogan told journalists Sunday on a flight from Berlin, where he watched Turkey play the Netherlands in the quarter-final of the European Championship\u2019s soccer tournament.
\n\u201cWe talk about mediation everywhere, so why not with the one on our border?\u201d Erdogan added in comments reported by the state-run Anadolu news agency.
\nThis comes as the Turkish government has been facing increased pressure to repatriate millions of Syrian refugees amid a steep economic downturn and rising anti-refugee sentiment.
\nA week ago anti-Syrian riots broke out in Kayseri, central Turkey, following reports that a Syrian refugee had allegedly sexually harassed a 7-year-old Syrian girl. Residents of Melikgazi overturned cars and set shops ablaze, calling on Syrians to leave the country.
\nLast year, the Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers met in Moscow alongside counterparts from Russia and Iran, marking the highest-level contact between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war. But those talks and a previous meeting involving the two countries\u2019 defense ministers did not bear fruit.
\nSigns of d\u00e9tente between Erdogan and Assad, including plans to open a crossing between Syrian government-held areas and those held by opposition groups in Aleppo province, have led to rising tensions in towns controlled by the Turkish-backed opposition. AP<\/p>\n
The Idlib-based \u201csalvation government\u201d of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham \u2014 a formerly al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that controls other parts of northwestern Syria \u2014 issued a statement on July 1 calling on Turkey to \u201cassume its legal and moral responsibilities to protect Syrian refugees.\u201d AP<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISTANBUL, 7 Jul: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his willingness to restore ties with Syria and extended an \u201cinvitation\u201d Sunday to bring back relations to \u201chow they were in the past.\u201d Over 12 years ago, diplomatic ties between Ankara and Damascus were cut off when protests turned into a civil war in Syria. Turkey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-243879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}