In response to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's statement about a possibility of negotiating with Syrian President Bashar Assad, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu compared Assad to dictators and said he was no different from Hitler, Slobodan Milošević or Saddam Hussein.
Speaking at the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) weekly parliamentary group meeting, Davutoğlu said that Turkey has the same sensitivity toward everyone in the region regardless of their ethnicity or religion. He harshly criticized the opposition parties for their "selective sensitivity" claiming they only care about what interests them. "The Peoples' Democratic Party [HDP] only cares about Kobani in Syria, while the Republican People's Party [CHP] does not hesitate to shake hands with Assad, the brutal dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of people," Davutoğlu said, adding that the government cares about all people of Syria who are trapped between the oppressive Syrian regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorist group.
He said that what happened in the Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988 is no different to what is currently happening in Aleppo, Syria. He added that Turkey has warned the Assad regime numerous times not to oppress the Syrian people, to no avail.
He challenged the possibility of negotiating with Assad and said that shaking hands with Assad would be a historical mistake that would be questioned by future generations. "Turkey has never sided with the oppressor and we never will," Davutoğlu said.
He also said that Turkey welcomes the correction on remarks made by Kerry who suggested in a recent interview that the U.S. would have to talk with Assad eventually if peace was to be forged. Davutoğlu furthermore called on the U.S. and EU to avoid cooperating with oppressors.
Turkey, which has maintained the stance it adopted at the onset of the Syrian civil war that the Assad regime should be removed in order to restore peace in Syria, has strongly disagreed with the idea that Assad should be brought to the negotiating table. In response to Kerry's recent remarks that the U.S. will have to negotiate with the Assad regime to end the civil war, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that a diplomatic approach to the matter would bring no gains as he said there is nothing to negotiate with a regime that has "killed over 200,000" civilians.
Kerry's recent remarks that the U.S. will have to negotiate with Assad has revealed signs of discord once again between the U.S. and Turkish governments regarding their stance on Assad, which Turkey has always branded as the seed of atrocity and chaos in Syria. Çavuşoğlu reiterated on Monday that Assad is the main cause of all problems in Syria and that there is nothing to be negotiated with him.
"What is there to negotiate with Assad? What do you have to negotiate with a regime that killed more than 200,000 people and used chemical weapons? What conclusion has been reached out of negotiations?" Çavuşoğlu asked during his visit to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
Çavuşoğlu's statement came as a reaction to Kerry's remarks, which were a manifestation of the U.S's sustained will of sitting at the negotiating table with Assad to talk over a political transformation in Syria, instead of fighting against it. The U.S, which has displayed considerable reluctance to take a stand against the Assad regime except on a political platform while fighting against the ISIS, which still controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, has been consistently called on by Turkish authorities to oust Assad to remove ISIS from the region.
However, the U.S government, which leads the anti-ISIS coalition, has chosen to only fight against ISIS, excluding Assad, who has killed tens of thousands of civilians, and is leaning toward diffusing the crisis with diplomatic efforts. Pushing Assad to make a deal for a transition in Syria is how the U.S. aims to solve the issue.
Speaking in an interview with CBS News, Kerry said: "We have to negotiate in the end." He added: "And what we're pushing for is to get [Assad] to come and do that and it may require that there be increased pressure on him."
In response, Çavuşoğlu said Assad is the cause of all problems in Syria and noted that the biggest support the terrorist organizations gain is from the Syrian regime. He added: "It is not a realistic approach to think if Assad withdraws support from these terrorist organizations, it will ease things."
Violence has been rampant in Syria, first surfacing with the beginning of the civil war in 2011 and continuing with the rise of ISIS, which has taken control of parts of Syria and Iraq. The Assad regime, which has killed thousands of civilians in the war-torn country, is deemed by the Turkish government to be the main reason for the emergence and rise of ISIS in the region.
These two lingering dangers in Syria and Iraq have forced thousands of refugees to seek safety and shelter in neighboring countries. Turkey, which has been taking the lead in hosting refugees, whose numbers now near 2 million, is vulnerable to possible infiltration, which has prompted the government to increase security at its borders.
*Contributed by Ayşe Şahin
