Regional countries in consensus on Syria’s future: Turkish foreign minister

ANKARA

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday that regional countries are in consensus on the issue of Syria.

Speaking at a panel titled “New Dawn for Damascus: Prospects for Syria’s Transition” during the 61st Munich Security Conference in Germany, Fidan said, “When the Assad regime fell, we came together with the regional countries, and we discussed what we are expecting from the new administration in Damascus before taking any post-war steps.”

Highlighting that many countries agreed on the same principles, Fidan said, “We don't want to see any more threats to the neighboring countries. We don't want to see terrorism flourishing or finding a ground for itself.”

“We don't want to see the mistreatment of the minorities, and we want to see the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of Syria provided and an inclusive governing,” the foreign minister noted.

“So when we communicated all these requests of the international and regional community with the new administration in Syria, they responded quite well,” he added.

Single national army

Fidan emphasized that one of the most important issues in ensuring Syria's stability is the unity of armed groups and that the country's new administration is addressing this issue in a "very comprehensive way."

“They (the Syrian administration) are taking the right steps in uniting the armed groups,” he said, adding, “In our views, there has to be only one legal armed force in any given country.”

To ensure public order, safety, and security, the issue of militias should be addressed by combining them into a single national army, said the Turkish foreign minister.

‘Those we protected are now ruling country’

Underlining that the transition period is going on, Fidan said, "We are recalculating every step that we are taking in Syria.”

“Our primary objective and occupation at the moment regarding Syria is how to help them in reconstruction and how to get the economy back again and then rebuild the government institutions,” he explained.

He emphasized that Türkiye has utilized its army solely to protect the population living under opposition control. "We were talking about five million people at the time. So that was the result of the Astana process."

“I think today, all the people that we were there to protect now, thank God, they are ruling the country altogether. Hopefully, a bright future is waiting for them,” the minister noted.

He stressed that Türkiye is expecting Syria to stand by its side in the fight against terrorism and terrorist organizations.

“PKK/YPG is a big threat like Daesh/ISIS to Syria and the entire region because the international terrorist fighters from Türkiye, Iraq, and Iran are now packed and fueled in northern Syria, and they are disguising themselves under the pretext of fighting against Daesh (ISIS),” Fidan stressed.

“You cannot allow these people to occupy 1/3 of the country and to sit on the oil and gas fields, to rob the country, and not to allow the central government and millions of the other Syrians to benefit from the oil and gas, so this should end,” he urged.

“This is not only a national security threat to us, but also a big problem for our region,” he warned.