Turkish Foreign Minister Says Erdogan, Putin, Assad to Meet After January 2023

ISTANBUL (Sputnik) - A meeting between the Turkish, Syrian and Russian leaders has been scheduled, but not for January, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.

On December 15, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he had offered to Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Syria, which will be preceded by a meeting of the heads of the intelligence services, defense and foreign ministries.

On December 28, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the defense ministers of Russia, Syria and Turkey held trilateral talks in Moscow to discuss ways to resolve the Syrian crisis.

"As for the summit of the leaders of the three countries, again there is no date, but January is too early for that, so we cannot say that the summit will take place in January," the minister said, as quoted by a local broadcaster.

Commenting on the recent trilateral defense ministers meeting, Cavusoglu said that the talks were important in terms of reaching an agreement on a road map for the Syrian settlement, adding that the contacts on the issue would continue.

"The meeting turned out to be useful. We believe that interaction with the Syrian authorities is important to reach an agreement that will ensure stability and a lasting peace, and these contacts are also important to reach a consensus between the regime and the opposition on the road map [for conflict settlement]," the minister added.

Even though Ankara believes that the Syrian authorities did not cooperate on the fight against terrorism due to political differences, there is room for joint work in the future, Cavusoglu said, adding that current negotiations with Damascus did not prevent Ankara from continuing operations against terrorists on Syrian territory.

The war in Syria has been ongoing since 2011, with various armed insurgent groups, including terrorist organizations, fighting the Syrian Army in an attempt to topple the government of President Bashar Assad. Since 2016, the Turkish armed forces have also been conducting air and ground operations in Syria against armed Kurdish groups. Moscow and Ankara have been acting as mediators in the conflict within various frameworks, such as the mediation group on the Syrian settlement in Astana launched in 2017 or the Congress of the Syrian national dialogue hosted in the Russian city of Sochi in 2018.