Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that he may restore diplomatic relations with the regime of his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, after the end of Turkey’s presidential election in June 2023, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on Thursday, as quoted by EFE.

“There is no resentment, hatred or eternal anger in politics,” Erdogan told reporters who had accompanied him on the plane from Bali, the Indonesian island where the G20 summit was being held, and who took the opportunity to ask him about Turkey’s relationship with Syria. .

“When the moment is right, a person sits down, evaluates things and updates them. Turkey may reconsider its relations with countries with which it has had difficulties. Especially after the elections in June (2023), we can start from scratch,” he added.

Ankara and Damascus began a rapprochement in 2004 after decades of tension, and by 2009 Erdogan had held several cordial meetings with Bashar al-Assad, but harmony was disrupted after the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and after Turkey backed the Syrian opposition, which picked up a weapon.

After three military incursions in 2016, 2018 and 2019, Turkey controls important areas in northern Syria in cooperation with Islamist militias opposed to the Assad regime.

In August, protests against Ankara took place in these regions after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu declared the need for “brothers of the opposition with the regime in Syria to reach an agreement.”

For its part, the Turkish opposition promises that if it wins next year’s elections, it will restore diplomatic relations with the Assad regime in order to return 3.6 million Syrian refugees from Turkey.

And last week’s bombing in Istanbul, in which Turkish police charged a Kurdish-Syrian agent who allegedly claimed to be a Syrian refugee for four months, reignited the debate over the large number of Syrian migrants in Turkey. (Agerpress)