President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will meet in August, with the intelligence agencies of both countries in contact to finalize the details, the pro-government Türkiye daily reported, citing sources familiar with the plan.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov this week revealed that Erdoğan’s possible meeting with Assad was discussed during a meeting between Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The meeting is expected to occur soon Türkiye said, with sources predicting that the two leaders will meet no later than August.
The location of the meeting remains undecided, according to Türkiye, with early suggestions including Iraq or a border crossing between Turkey and Syria.
This comes in the wake of tensions that mounted this month after a mob went on the rampage, vandalizing businesses and properties owned by Syrians in a central Anatolian city.
Turkey originally aimed to topple Assad’s regime when the Syrian civil war erupted with the violent suppression of peaceful protesters in 2011, backing rebels calling for his ouster.
But more recently Ankara has shifted focus to preventing what Erdoğan in 2019 called a “terror corridor” from opening up in northern Syria.
He has long said he could reconsider ties with Assad as his government works to ensure the safe and voluntary return of Syrian refugees.
Three weeks ago Turkish authorities detained over 470 people after anti-Syrian riots in several cities sparked by accusations that a Syrian man had allegedly harassed a Syrian minor in Kayseri.
Erdoğan blamed the opposition for stoking tensions and condemned the anti-Syrian violence as “unacceptable.”
The fate of Syrian refugees is a key issue in Turkish politics, with Erdoğan’s opponents in last year’s presidential election promising to send them back to Syria. Erdoğan himself promised to send a million Syrians back.
Turkey, which hosts some 3.2 million Syrian refugees according to UN data, has been shaken several times by bouts of xenophobic violence in recent years, often triggered by rumors spreading on social media and instant messaging applications.