BEIRUT/ANKARA: Syria is resisting Russian efforts to broker a summit with Turkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan, three sources said on Friday, after more than a decade of bitter enmity since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war.
However, two Turkish sources, including a senior official, disputed that Damascus was delaying and said that things were on track for an eventual meeting between the leaders.
Erdogan’s government supports rebel fighters who tried to topple President Bashar Assad and has accused the Syrian leader of state terrorism, saying earlier in the conflict that peace efforts could not continue under his rule.
Assad says it is Turkiye which has backed terrorism by supporting an array of fighters including Islamist factions and launching repeated military incursions inside northern Syria. Ankara is readying another possible operation, after blaming Syrian Kurdish fighters for a bombing in Istanbul.
Russia helped Assad turn the tide of the war in his favor and says it is seeking a political end to the conflict and wants to bring the two leaders together for talks.
Erdogan has signalled readiness for rapprochement.
Speaking a week after he shook hands with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi last month, after repeatedly saying he could not meet a leader who came to power in a coup, he said Turkiye could “also get things on track with Syria.”
“There can be no resentment in politics,” he said in a televised discussion at the weekend.
However, three sources with knowledge of Syria’s position on possible talks said Assad had rejected a proposal to meet Erdogan with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Two of the sources said Damascus believed such a meeting could boost Erdogan ahead of Turkish elections next year, especially if it addressed Ankara’s goal of returning some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees from Turkiye.
“Why hand Erdogan a victory for free? No rapprochement will happen before the elections,” one of the two said, adding that Syria had also turned down the idea of a foreign ministers’ meeting.
The third source, a diplomat with knowledge of the proposal, said Syria “sees such a meeting as useless if it does not come with anything concrete, and what they have asked for so far is the full withdrawal of Turkish troops.”
Turkish officials said this week the army needed just a few days to be ready for a ground incursion into northern Syria, where it has already carried out artillery and air strikes.
But the government has also said it is ready for talks with Damascus if they focus on security at the border, where Ankara wants Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters pushed from the frontier and refugees moved into ‘safe zones’.
An Assad-Erdogan meeting could be possible “in the not too distant future,” the senior Turkish official said.
“Putin is slowly preparing the path for this,” the official said. “It would be the beginning of a major change in Syria and would have very positive effects on Turkiye. Russia would benefit too... given it is stretched in many areas.”
Syria resisting Russia’s efforts to broker Turkiye summit, sources say
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Syria resisting Russia’s efforts to broker Turkiye summit, sources say
- Erdogan's government supports rebel fighters who tried to topple President Bashar al-Assad and has accused the Syrian leader of state terrorism
- Assad says it is Turkiye which has backed terrorism by supporting an array of fighters including Islamist factions
Syria’s Kurdish fighters agree to leave Aleppo after deadly clashes
- Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that “buses carrying the last batch of members of the SDF organization have left the Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood in Aleppo, heading toward northeastern Syria”
ALEPPO: Syria’s Kurdish fighters said Sunday that they agreed under a ceasefire to withdraw from Aleppo after days of fighting government forces in the city.
Hours earlier, Syria’s military said it had finished operations in the Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood with state television reporting that Kurdish fighters who surrendered were being bused to the north.
The military had already announced its seizure of Aleppo’s other Kurdish-held neighborhood, Ashrafiyeh.
Kurdish forces had controlled pockets of Syria’s second city Aleppo and operate a de facto autonomous administration across swathes of the north and northeast, much of it captured during the 14-year civil war.
The latest clashes erupted after negotiations to integrate the Kurds into the country’s new government stalled.
“We reached an understanding that led to a ceasefire and secured the evacuation of the martyrs, the wounded, the trapped civilians and the fighters from Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsud neighborhoods to northern and eastern Syria,” the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) wrote in a statement.
Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that “buses carrying the last batch of members of the SDF organization have left the Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood in Aleppo, heading toward northeastern Syria.”
The SDF initially denied its fighters were leaving, describing the bus transfers as forced displacement of civilians.
An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying men out of Sheikh Maqsud, but could not independently verify their identities.
According to the SDF statement, the ceasefire was reached “through the mediation of international parties to stop the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo.”
The United States and European Union both called for the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to political dialogue.
The fighting, some of the most intense since the ousting of long-time ruler Bashar Assad in December 2024, has killed at least 21 civilians, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people fled their homes.
Both sides blamed the other for starting the clashes on Tuesday.
Children ‘still inside’
On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who had been trapped by the fighting were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces.
An AFP correspondent saw men carrying children on their backs board buses headed to shelters.
Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the crowd, with security forces making them sit on the ground before transporting them to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.
A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the young men were “fighters” being “transferred to Syrian detention centers.”
At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old Imad Al-Ahmad was heading in the opposite direction, trying to seek permission to return home.
“I left four days ago...I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”
Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.
“My three children are still inside, at my neighbor’s house. I want to get them out,” she said.
A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until further notice.
‘Return to dialogue’
US envoy Tom Barrack met Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Saturday, and afterwards called for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with the integration framework agreed in March.
The deal was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralized rule, stymied progress as Damascus repeatedly rejected the idea.
The fighting in Aleppo raised fears of a regional escalation, with neighboring Turkiye, a close ally of Syria’s new Islamist authorities, saying it was ready to intervene. Israel has sided with the Kurdish forces.
The clashes have also tested the Syrian authorities’ ability to reunify the country after the brutal civil war and commitment to protecting minorities, after sectarian bloodshed rocked the country’s Alawite and Druze communities last year.
