Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted, in an exclusive interview to the Reuters News agency, which was acquired by TV7, that there could be no solution to Syria’s conflict, while President Bashar Assad remains in power, and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin informed him that he was not personally committed to the Syrian leader.
“Assad is not the address for a prospective solution in Syria. Syria should be liberated from Assad so that a solution could emerge. So long as Assad remains in power, a solution can never be created in Syria. He has turned Syria into what it is today. He is responsible for the state terror reigning over Syria.” / “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin said the following, quote: Erdogan, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate for Assad, I’m not his lawyer. That’s what he said. Putin told me this. But I think there are some other conditions, there are some other developments in place, there might be certain things he cannot share with us, but right now Putin, Trump, us, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, we have all assumed active role in the effort to create a solution in Syria. We can get together and we can help the people of Syria and I say let them make the final decision,” said Erdogan.
Syria’s war began in 2011 after a popular uprising against the Assad family’s more than four-decade rule, inspired by a so called ‘Arab Spring’ during which violent protests and revolts were recorded across the Arab world. The war, in which rebels mostly from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority against a minority rule rooted in Assad’s Alawite Shi’ite Muslim community, has killed more than half a million people, and created the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two. The conflict drew-in most regional and global powers and allowed the Islamic State to seize swathes of territory. Assad, backed militarily by Iran and Russia, shows no willingness to compromise, much less step aside to allow a transition Western powers claim is the solution to the conflict. Instead, Russia’s dramatic military intervention in 2015 — after four years of inconclusive fighting — tilted the balance of power in Assad’s favor and gave him the upper hand against the rebels.