ANKARA/JEDDAH: The visit of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to Ankara for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit will be a key opportunity for bilateral talks on pressing issues in the region, especially Syria.
This is the view of Younes Demirar, Turkey’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper during a telephonic interview from Ankara on Sunday that the talks would also focus on terrorism, particularly Daesh.
He said Riyadh and Ankara share the same views on all regional issues, including on Syria and Yemen.
The summit would help the two sides produce a joint strategy on how to deal with challenges in these countries, particularly a political solution for Syria.
Meanwhile, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Maher Onal received at his office here today the Minister of Culture and Information Adel Al-Toraifi to discuss cultural cooperation between the two countries, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
Al-Toraifi had also met with the Deputy Director General of Turkish Television and Broadcasting Corporation Zaki Chivichi and discussed areas of possible cooperation.
Following the meeting, Chivichi honored Al-Toraifi with a memorial shield to mark his visit.
The meeting was attended, on the Saudi side, by Abdulmalik Al-Shalhoub, acting president of the Television and Broadcasting Commission, and Abdulmohsen Elias, undersecretary of the ministry for external information.
Joint Saudi-Turkey action on Syria and Yemen planned
Joint Saudi-Turkey action on Syria and Yemen planned
High-level Turkish team to visit Damascus on Monday for talks on SDF integration
- The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal
ANKARA: A high-level Turkish delegation will visit Damascus on Monday to discuss bilateral ties and the implementation of a deal for integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into Syria’s state apparatus, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
The visit by Turkiye’s foreign and defense ministers and its intelligence chief comes amid efforts by Syrian, Kurdish and US officials to show some progress with the deal. But Ankara accuses the SDF of stalling ahead of a year-end deadline.
Turkiye views the US-backed SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, as a terrorist organization and has warned of military action if the group does not honor the agreement.
Last week Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara hoped to avoid resorting to military action against the SDF but that its patience was running out.
The Foreign Ministry source said Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and the head of Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, would attend the talks in Damascus, a year after the fall of former President Bashar Assad.
TURKEY SAYS ITS NATIONAL SECURITY IS AT STAKE
The source said the integration deal “closely concerned Turkiye’s national security priorities” and the delegation would discuss its implementation. Turkiye has said integration must ensure that the SDF’s chain of command is broken.
Sources have previously told Reuters that Damascus sent a proposal to the SDF expressing openness to reorganizing the group’s roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units.
Turkiye sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and says it too must disarm and dissolve itself, in line with a disarmament process now underway between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Ankara has conducted cross-border military operations against the SDF in the past. It accuses the group of wanting to circumvent the integration deal and says this poses a threat to both Turkiye and the unity of Syria.
