No communications or negotiations with Turkey on combating terrorism, Syria says
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Syrian Foreign Ministry denied on Tuesday that Damascus is either communicating or negotiating with Turkey on cooperation against terrorism or security issues.
Mevlut Cavusoglu had earlier told Turkey’s NTV news channel that Ankara and Damascus share the same opinion about the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Syrian unity and hold meetings on such issues. However, he clarified that the two neighboring countries still do not have political relations.
In a statement provided to the Syrian state-run SANA news agency, the foreign ministry “categorically” denied “the existence of any kind of communication or negotiations with the Turkish regime, especially in the field of combating terrorism.”
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Turkey and Syria severed ties in 2011, shortly after the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
On Saturday, the newspaper Türkiye reported that Hakan Fidan, the director of Turkey’s National Intelligence (MIT) agency, would meet with his Syrian counterpart, National Security Director Ali Mamlouk, in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
In January 2020, the two men met in Moscow in the first official contact between them in several years as part of a Russian-brokered public meeting.
Ismail Hakki Pekin, the former head of the Turkish General Staff Intelligence Agency, predicted that their meeting would be “the beginning of a new process”.
“The process that started with Hakan Fidan will definitely reactivate the channels of diplomacy and politics,” he told Türkiye.
“A new era will begin.”