Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Wednesday hosted Syrian opposition officials in the capital Ankara for talks.
Çavuşoğlu met with Salem al-Meslet, president of the National Coalition, Badr Jamous, head of the Negotiations Committee, and Abdulrahman Mustafa, prime minister of the provisional government.
"We appreciate and support the opposition's contribution to the political process within the framework of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254," Çavuşoğlu said on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Çavuşoğlu underlined that steps must be taken for lasting peace in Syria, adding that Syria's Bashar Assad regime should not see the opposition as terrorists.
"From the very beginning, Türkiye said that the most important process is the political one," he said.
Türkiye has backed opposition groups fighting to topple the Assad regime and cut diplomatic relations with Damascus early in the 11-year conflict.
But Russian intervention has helped Assad's regime drive the opposition back to a pocket of northwest Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said after talks in Russia earlier this month that President Vladimir Putin had suggested Türkiye cooperate with the Syrian regime to tackle violence along their joint border.
Erdoğan has warned that Türkiye could launch another military operation into northern Syria targeting the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group, the YPG, to extend a "safe zone" where Ankara says some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it currently hosts could return.
Asked last week about potential talks with Damascus, Erdoğan was quoted as saying diplomacy between states can never be fully severed. There is a "need to take further steps with Syria," he said.
Türkiye’s aim in Syria is not to defeat Assad but to find a political solution to the decade-long crisis in the country, Erdoğan said recently.
A United Nations Security Council resolution adopted in December 2015 unanimously endorsed a road map to peace in Syria that was approved in Geneva on June 30, 2012, by representatives of the United Nations (UN), the Arab League, the European Union, Türkiye and all five permanent Security Council members – the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.
It calls for a Syrian-led political process starting with the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections. The resolution says the free and fair elections should meet “the highest international standards” of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians – including members of the diaspora – eligible to participate.
Syria has been mired in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity. U.N. estimates show that more than 8 million Syrians have either been internally displaced or become refugees in other countries since 2011. The Syrian regime held presidential elections in May in which authorities say Assad won 95.1% of the votes.
