Assad
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Syrian foreign minister rejects normal ties with Turkey without end to occupation
Syrian foreign minister Faisal Mekdad said on Saturday that Turkey would have to end its military presence in his country to achieve a full rapprochement, Reuters reported.
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Sweden needs to extradite 130 ‘terrorists’ to Turkey for its NATO bid: Erdogan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded the extradition of some 130 people from Sweden to Turkey whom he called “terrorists” in order for his country to approve Sweden’s NATO membership, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
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Sticking points between Syria and Turkey / Michael Jansen
Last week’s meeting in Moscow of the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers appears to have led to the suspension of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threat to mount a major military operation against US-sponsored Syrian Kurdish forces engaged in the fight against Daesh. Erdogan regards the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as offshoots of Turkey's Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which has staged an insurgency since 1984. He blames the YPG for the November 15th bombing which killed six and injured 81 in a pedestrianized market in central Istanbul. The YPG has flatly rejected this charge.
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Role of Syrian Kurds in Erdogan's fate and Turkey-US relations
According to a considerable number of experts, the attack of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Syrian Kurds can win him in the next elections in Turkey, but this attack on America's allies in Syria can worsen the current cold ties between Turkey and the United States.
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Turkish election the keyword for Erdogan's normalization with Assad
The pragmatism of decision-makers in Ankara surprised most observers of Turkish-Syrian relations. Normalization between the Turkish president and the president of the Syrian regime was not something that would have come to mind only months ago. The expectations were that the contacts would remain on an indirect intelligence level mediated by Moscow or Tehran, or at best a direct security contact.
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Erdogan, Assad to likely hold phone talk – report
Some news sources have announced the possibility of a holding telephone conversation between the presidents of Turkey and Syria in the near future, Iranian Mehr News agency reported.
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Tough days ahead for Syrian refugees as anti-migrant sentiment grows in Turkey / Turkmen Terzi
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power since 2002, has found itself losing support amid soaring inflation and high unemployment. Millions of Syrian refugees are at increased risk of xenophobic attacks from the nationalist segment of Turkish society who blame Syrians for the worsening economic situation. The AKP has opened the country’s border to millions of Syrians since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Ultranationalist figures in Turkey today are recognized as the descendants of the Ottoman Empire’s Union and Progress Party (CUP), also known as the Young Turks, a political group that embraced a Turkification policy which excluded the empire’s ethnic identities such as Arab and Kurdish citizens.