ANKARA, December 15. /TASS/. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he suggested to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that a trilateral meeting be held with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to the TRT TV channel.
Intelligence officials as well as defense and foreign ministers from Turkey, Syria and Russia should hold talks to prepare the ground for a meeting between the three countries’ leaders, he added. "I proposed this to Mr. Putin. He also viewed it positively. We will start a series of negotiations," Erdogan told reporters on his way to Turkey from Turkmenistan where on Wednesday he participated in a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
As for Turkey’s plans to conduct a ground operation in Syria, Erdogan noted that Ankara supports joint actions by Russia, Turkey and Syria. He reiterated that a decision on the matter was enshrined in the Sochi memorandum in 2019, including the creation of a 30-kilometer security corridor to the south of Turkey’s border. The Turkish leader noted that coordination with Russia on the Syria issue has been discussed and implemented for a long time.
He stressed that Ankara’s patience with regards to terrorist threats from the neighboring country and the Western support, mainly on the part of the US, for terrorist organizations there, has been wearing thin. The Turkish president asserted that his country would take matters into its own hands if countries like the US continue to provide "thousands of truckloads" of weapons, ammunition, tools and equipment to terrorists in Syria.
Following the August 5 talks in Sochi between the leaders of Turkey and Russia, Turkish media outlets reported that there was a possibility of establishing direct contact between the Turkish and Syrian leaders. Turkey’s authorities stated that such talks have not yet been planned. On October 6, following the Prague summit of the European Political Community, Erdogan said that an in-person meeting with al-Assad was out of the question. Later, he said that such a meeting was possible when "the time is right."