Will the reconciliation between Damascus and Ankara end the 12-year Syrian crisis?
It seems that the leaders of Turkey and Syria are taking steps to re-establish communication between the two countries, which will undoubtedly be against Washington’s wishes.
In an article, the Russian newspaper Rashatudi, mentioning this introduction and avoiding the topic of a possible meeting between the presidents of Turkey and Syria, raised the question of whether, after 11 years of disconnection between Syria and Turkey, whether their rapprochement could end. Will the final chapter of the brutal war in Syria be enabled by breaking the current stalemate?
At the beginning of his analysis, Rashatoudi cites the words of the Turkish Foreign Minister in describing the conditions underlying a possible meeting between Bashar Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu recently said that he may meet with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Meqdad in early February, a meeting that will focus on further negotiations to resume relations between the governments of Damascus and Ankara. On the other side of the story is America, which is not very willing to resume relations with Syria’s neighbors.
Despite the recent statement by the US State Department spokesman Ned Price that Washington will not support countries that seek to improve relations with the Damascus government or support this process, it seems that Ankara And Damascus, regardless of these objections, continue their path towards the normalization of relations between the two countries.
According to Rashatoudi, the first step towards the normalization of relations between Ankara and Damascus was taken at the end of December last year, when the news of the meeting between the defense ministers of Syria and Turkey in Moscow was published in media reports. The general outcome of the meeting between the defense ministers of Syria and Turkey was this: Ankara’s verbal insistence on respecting the territorial integrity of Syria, solving the current refugee crisis and fighting against all terrorist groups that threaten Turkey’s borders. This issue caused a lot of speculation about the conditions that can help to restore the relations between the two countries.
