By Jonathan Spicer
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s calls for talks with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad are a long shot but meant to send a message of reconciliation in a region increasingly distracted by war, the head of Syria’s main opposition abroad said.
Ankara, which long backed rebels seeking to oust Assad, has stepped up its push for direct talks as it tries to secure its border with Syria and seeks the return of more than three million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.
Hadi Al Bahra, president of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, said an Erdogan-Assad meeting was “possible” even though Ankara fully understands that Damascus cannot currently deliver on its demands.
“Turkey is very eager about this,” he told Reuters. “They see clearly what they need to achieve… but know very well the limitations of (Assad’s) regime.”
“They know it’s difficult and it will take time, but they are building a case… and sending clear messages to the world and to the regime, including to Arab countries,” Bahra said late last week at the coalition’s Istanbul office.
Bahra heads the internationally-recognised Syrian opposition, which holds regular talks with the United Nations and represents anti-Assad groups including the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army or Free Syrian Army.
His note of caution comes as Erdogan made his latest appeal to Assad on Saturday, saying Turkey was “waiting for a response” from its southern neighbour, which has been riven by 13 years of war that drew in the United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Since 2016, Turkish troops have been stationed across growing swathes of northern Syria, in large part to check a Kurdish militia that Ankara deems a terrorist group.
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon has pushed Syria’s poverty, hunger, extremism and lingering violence further off the world’s radar, Bahra said, seriously risking a “full collapse”.
For global and regional powers, Syria is not even a “top 10” priority, he said. They consider it “a manageable humanitarian crisis – which is a faulty impression,” Bahra added.
After meetings with U.S., Turkish and other delegations last week, he said a UN-led political process remains “frozen”.
REFUGEES
Russia, Iran and Iraq have urged Erdogan and Assad to meet.
However, Assad said last month that this effort had yielded no “results worth mentioning”, adding that while he wants Turkish troops to withdraw from Syria, it was not a precondition for talks. Damascus wants a timeline for withdrawal, while Ankara wants its concerns over the PKK militia addressed.
In his comments on Saturday, Erdogan said he believed a meeting with Assad would usher in a new era in ties, adding: “Millions of people outside Syria are waiting to return to their homeland.”
More than 3 million Syrians fled the war for Turkey, among the world’s largest homes for refugees. Yet they face some prejudice and sporadic violence, and they emerged as a divisive issue in last year’s election in which Turkey’s main parties pledged repatriation.
Bahra said many Syrians now in Turkey had fought against Assad’s rule and were from regions well beyond the Turkish-controlled north, complicating matters.
Turks “know for a fact they can force maybe 100,000, 200,000 or 500,000 refugees to go back to Syria, but they cannot force 3 million or three and a half million”, he said.
“They see clearly that to get this… you need to achieve political resolution of the crisis.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Daren Butler and Gareth Jones)
