Turkey has slammed the United States for proposing open talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in order to end the crisis in the Arab country.
Turkey’s
foreign minister on Monday reacted furiously to a call by US Secretary of State
John Kerry for launching a dialogue with the Syrian president, saying that
there would come nothing out of such talks. “What is there to be negotiated
with Assad?” Mevlut Cavusoglu told the Anatolia news agency at the end of his
trip to Cambodia.
Cavusoglu
also claimed that the previous negotiations with the Assad government have all
failed to yield results. Turkey has been one of the main opponents of Assad
since a conflict began in Syria over four years ago. Ankara is being accused by
many governments for the persistence of bloody violence in Syria as it has
openly supported the armed militants fighting against Assad. Various offshoots
of al-Qaeda and the ISIL Takfiri terrorists use the Turkey-Syrian border as a
major supply route for obtaining heavy weapons and artillery.
Kerry,
whose country is also a main backer of anti-government militants, said Sunday
that launching negotiations with Assad would be inevitable if a settlement is
to emerge from the conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than 215,000
people since March 2011. “We have to negotiate in the end” with Assad, Kerry
said in an interview with CBS News.
Cavusoglu,
however, insisted again that Assad (pictured above) must have no role in
resolving the dispute in Syria as, according to him, only a “political
transformation” could end the crisis in the Arab
country.
Turkish
officials have repeatedly called for Assad’s removal from power despite a
rising inclination in the international community for engaging more with the
Syrian government to find a political solution to the crisis.
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