Iran, Turkey, Russia Foreign Ministers convene to discuss Syrian crisis
Ankara raised its objections to any Kurdish role in Syria's peace talks.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) - Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Sunday hosted his Iranian and Russian counterparts, Mohammad Javad Zarif and Sergey Lavrov, in the resort city of Antalya to discuss the Syrian civil war.
The tripartite meeting comes ahead of high-level talks between the Presidents of their respective countries, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hassan Rouhani, and Vladimir Putin, set to take place next week in Russia in the hope of reaching a peaceful solution to end the six years-long Syrian conflict.
The Syrian regime's two main backers, Tehran and Moscow, along with Ankara, a backer of Islamist rebels fighting to topple the Damascus government, are parties to a de-escalation agreement reached in Kazakhstan's Astana.
Addressing the media after the meeting, Cavusoglu said he relayed his country's concerns regarding the role of Syrian Kurdish groups in any peace talks, reported Kurdistan 24's Turkish language service.
"It is unacceptable for us that [they] participate in any summit," he said, reiterating his government's objection to any invitation for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party's (PYD) to join talks in Russia's Sochi or the UN-initiated Geneva process.
Ankara considers the PYD and its US-backed armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), as mere offshoots of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), thus labeling 'terrorists.'
Washington and Moscow do not share the same view.
Russia's invitation last month for the PYD to join a summit dubbed the "Syrian Peoples' Congress" led to Turkey voicing its strong opposition to the move.
Editing by Nadia Riva