Erdogan Unlikely To Meet With Assad Before Presidential Election

By Muhammad Irfan,UrduPoint News / Sputnik,

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unlikely to hold a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, until after the presidential election in Turkey, Cagri Erhan, a member of the Turkish Presidency’s Security and Foreign Policies Council, told Sputnik in an interview.

Erdogan on Wednesday confirmed that the country’s general election would take place on May 14 as scheduled, despite expectations that the earthquakes would cause a postponement.

“It is possible. But as far as I know there is no set date or place for such a meeting. President Erdogan in principle is not against such thing. But these devastating earthquakes changed everything.

All the schedule of the president has changed. He spends three days a week in the area of disasters. It is lees than 74 days now till the elections . So I don’t think that it will be possible to find a way to go just to make a photo with Assad. Maybe it will be after the elections,” Erhan said.

In 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria. Turkey, which maintained close relations with Damascus before the conflict, took the side of Assad’s opponents. Since then, relations between Turkey and Syria have remained difficult. In recent months, however, both sides have been talking about the possibility of a gradual normalization.