ANKARA, July 7. /TASS/. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is considering the option of holding negotiations on normalizing relations between Ankara and Damascus in Turkey.

"Now we are at a stage where as soon as [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad takes a step towards improving relations with Turkey, we will do the same. Because before we were not enemies with Syria, we met with Assad as a family. We can direct our invitations at any time. We hope that thanks to this we will be able to bring Turkish-Syrian relations to the same level as in the past. Putin has his own views on holding a meeting in Turkey. The Prime Minister of Iraq also has his own approaches to this issue. We always talk about mediation, but why can’t our neighbors be mediators?" Erdogan said as quoted by the Anadolu Agency.