Turkey committed to political solution to Syria: FM

By Ahmet Sait Akcay

ANKARA

Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday met a delegation from Syria's main opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC).

In a tweet, Cavusoglu said he had received the committee's head Nasr Hariri and expressed Turkey's commitment to finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis based on the Geneva Communique.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and more than 10 million displaced, according to the UN.

Russia, Turkey and Iran are the guarantor states that brokered a cease-fire in Syria last December, leading to the Astana peace talks.

The plenary meeting of the 8th round of the high-level Syria negotiations in Astana is scheduled to take place on Dec. 22.