ANKARA: Turkey does not have preconditions for dialogue with the Syrian government and talks should be goal-oriented, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday in a further softening of Ankara’s stance toward Damascus.
Turkey has backed rebels fighting to topple Syria’s President Bashar Assad, and cut diplomatic relations with Damascus early in the 11-year conflict.
But Russian intervention has helped Assad’s government drive the rebels back to a pocket of northwest Syria. Erdogan said after talks in Russia earlier this month that President Vladimir Putin had suggested Turkey cooperate with the Syrian government to tackle violence along their joint border.
Erdogan has warned that Turkey could launch another military incursion into northern Syria targeting Syria Kurdish fighters, to extend a ‘safe zone’ where Ankara says some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees which it currently hosts could return.
“There cannot be a condition for dialogue but what are the aim of these contacts? The country needs to cleared of terrorists... People need to be able to return,” Cavusoglu said.
“No conditions for dialogue but what is the aim, the target? It needs to be goal-oriented,” he said.
Asked last week about potential talks with Damascus, Erdogan was quoted as saying diplomacy between states can never be fully severed. There is a “need to take further steps with Syria,” Erdogan said according to a transcript of his comments to Turkish media.
Turkey says it has no preconditions for dialogue with Syria
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Turkey says it has no preconditions for dialogue with Syria
- Erdogan has warned that Turkey could launch another military incursion into northern Syria targeting Syria Kurdish fighters
The West Bank soccer field slated for demolition by Israel
- The move is likely to eliminate one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play
BETHLEHEM: Israeli authorities have ordered the demolition of a soccer field in a crowded refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, eliminating one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play.
“If the field gets demolished, this will destroy our dreams and our future. We cannot play any other place but this field, the camp does not have spaces,” said Rital Sarhan, 13, who plays on a girls’ soccer team in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.
The Israeli military issued a demolition order for the soccer field on December 31, saying it was built illegally in an area that abuts the concrete barrier wall that Israel built in the West Bank.
“Along the security fence, a seizure order and a construction prohibition order are in effect; therefore, the construction in the area was carried out unlawfully,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Mohammad Abu Srour, an administrator at Aida Youth Center, which manages the field, said the military gave them seven days to demolish the field.
The Israeli military often orders Palestinians to carry out demolitions themselves. If they do not act, the military steps in to destroy the structure in question and then sends the Palestinians a bill for the costs.
According to Abu Srour, Israel’s military told residents when delivering the demolition order that the soccer field represented a threat to the separation wall and to Israelis.
“I do not know how this is possible,” he said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel accelerated demolitions in Palestinian refugee camps in early 2025, leading to the displacement of 32,000 residents of camps in the central and northern West Bank. Human Rights Watch has called the demolitions a war crime. Israel has said they are intended to disrupt militant activity.
