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No meeting between Turkey's Erdogan, Syria's Assad: FM Mevlut Cavusoglu
There will be no meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria's Bashar al-Assad at an upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in September, Türkiye's foreign minister said on Tuesday (August 23).
According to media reports in the past few days, it is said that Erdoğan and Al-Assad will potentially meet on the sidelines of the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
This comes after a meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi earlier this month. Erdoğan said Putin asked him to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit.
Iran’s semi-official agency Tasnim reported that Putin had asked Al-Assad to attend the meeting in Shanghai, meaning it is likely that a meeting between the Syrian president and his Turkish counterpart will take place.
Speaking to the Haber Global news broadcaster in the capital Ankara, Türkiye's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu ruled out a meeting between Erdogan and Assad at the summit slated for Sept. 15-16 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, adding that Assad was "not invited" to the event.
Cavusoglu also underlined that steps must be taken for lasting peace in Syria, adding that the regime should not see the opposition as terrorists.
"From the very beginning, Türkiye said that the most important process is the political one," he said.
Report: Erdoğana and Assad might meet in Uzbekistan
Türkiye follows a "results-oriented" policy in Syria, Cavusoglu noted, stressing the importance of the country's territorial integrity and the need to clear terrorist organizations from it.
The 2022 annual summit of the SCO Heads of State Council will be held on September 15-16 in the central Asian country.
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