QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Not unsurprisingly, however, it is widely circulated on media outlets the announcement made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on August 5, when on board the presidential plane returning home from Sochi, where he told journalists that his Russian counterpart encouraged him to cooperate with “the Syrian regime.”
On Friday, he said “Diplomacy between states can never be fully severed,” taking what appeared to be a softer tone than his previous comments. There is a “need to take further steps with Syria.”
Erdogan’s statement was not the very first of its kind. Prior to that, his Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country was ready to give political support to “the Syrian regime” to fight the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Strikingly on Friday, Erdogan said he was no longer seeking to seize any Syrian territories. “We do not have eyes on the territory of Syria because the people of Syria are our brothers,” Turkish media quoted Erdogan as saying.
Since the Sochi summit on August 5, Erdogan seems to show a softer tone towards his southern neighbor. Cavusoglu’s remarks on the SDF were followed by more stark ones when he said he met, for a short while, his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad where he called on the Syrian government to reconcile with the opposition sparking wide scale protests in areas held by the Syrian opposition and Turkish forces in north and northwest Syria.
Damascus, adamantly, accuses Ankara of supporting terrorist groups in Syria being, whom it has been fighting for years.
In May, Erdogan announced he intended and prepared to carry out a new military incursion into Manbij and Tel Rifaat in east and north of Aleppo respectively.
At the onset of the decade-long Syrian crisis, Turkey adopted a soft approach to the Syrian government. However, things changed dramatically for the worst in summer 2011 when the Turkish president called on Bashar al-Assad to leave power. That made a halt to the political relations between the two countries.
The Turks, nonetheless, maintained that there had always been meetings between the intelligence services of the two parties. The claim Damascus categorically denies.
Repairing ties with one-time rivals such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt, Syria could be the next. This could be felt in his words “You should always be at peace,” Erdogan said.
The Turkish president is under immense pressure for the opposition at home to normalize ties with the al-Assad regime. There is however, the Syrian refugee’s card which weighs heavily on Erdogan.
Crippled by harsh economic sanctions, among others, Damascus may see in Ankara an aider to return to its position regionally and later globally.
More recently, Washington has called on the Syrian government to help return the US journalist Austin Tice who Washington says has been held by the Syrian authorities since 2012.
The Syrian government became a pariah state after its brutal crackdown on Syrian protesters calling for reforms in the country that was developed into a regime change. Damascus however, seems regaining its position in the Arab world. There are calls for the Syrian government to regain its seat in the Arab League which was suspended at the start of the Syrian revolution.